Citing your sources is a necessary part of any research paper or project. This element serves to give credit to the researchers and authors whose work informed yours and preserves academic integrity. Any source that provided you with ideas or information that you have included in your work and that is not considered common knowledge must be included, including websites.
There are many citation styles to reference resources correctly. At GJS, we encourage all students to use the MLA (9th ed.) referencing format or other approved referencing format, such as APA, when indicated by the teacher.
Works Cited List Entries (MLA 9th Edition Core Elements):
Author’s Last name, Author’s First name. “Title of Source.”* Title of Container, Names of other contributors along with their specific roles, version of the source (if it differs from the original or is unique), any key numbers associated with the source that aren’t dated (such as journal issue numbers or volume numbers), Name of the Publisher, publication date, location (such as the URL or page numbers).
Please click The MLA practice template to learn how to create entries in the works cited list, or click these MLA 9th ed. examples of common entries.
The list of citations (Works Cited) should be on the very last page of a research project or essay.
The top of the page should include the running head and the page number.
All entries should be placed alphabetically by the first item in the MLA format citation.
The entire page should be double-spaced.
Parenthetical Citation
An in-text citation is a reference to a source found within a paper's text. This tells readers that an idea, quote, or paraphrase originated from a source.
An in-text citation can be displayed in two different ways:
In the prose
Example:
When it comes to technology, King states that we “need to be comfortable enough with technology tools and services that we can help point our patrons in the right direction, even if we aren’t intimately familiar with how the device works” (11).
This MLA citation in prose includes King’s name in the sentence itself, and this specific line of text was taken from page 11 of the journal it was found in.
As a parenthetical citation.
Example:
When it comes to technology, we “need to be comfortable enough with technology tools and services that we can help point our patrons in the right direction, even if we aren’t intimately familiar with how the device works” (King 11).
