THE MLA DOCUMENTATION FORMAT IN A NUTSHELL

At the end of your paper you'll have something called a "Works Cited" list. This is the only place in your paper where you'll fully document your sources. To create each entry on this list, you’ll use the form that corresponds to the type of source you're citing in each case, whether it's an essay from an anthology, a newspaper article, a web site, a TV program, or what have you. Every form you can use is given in your Handbook on pages 594-612.

You'll match the specific quotations, facts, and paraphrases of opinions or proposals in your paper to this list. That's how your reader will know which of these sources any specific fact, opinion, proposal, or quotation anywhere in your paper came from. The idea is that you'll link a very brief reference, usually a single word, to a matching word on the "Works Cited" list at the end of the paper.

This matching word will be both the first word of the entry on the "Works Cited" list and the only word used to name the reference in the body of your paper. This word, when it appears inside the paper, is called an in-text citation. This one-word citation may be given in parenthesis after a fact or opinion is stated. But it may also be used to introduce the fact or opinion in an introductory phrase at the beginning of the relevant sentence. These two options are shown on page 581 in section 51c of your Handbook. For a discussion and examples of the various complications that can occur, see pages 585-591.

Here again are those two forms for in-text citations:

According to David Gardner, "Our nation is at risk" because of "a rising tide of mediocrity" in education (63-4).

In 1981, the National Commission of Excellence in Education reported that "our nation is at risk" due to a "rising tide of mediocrity" in education (Gardner 63-4).

But you must not plagiarize. You can do that in one of two ways.

(1) You can steal Gardner’s ideas by saying something like this:

I think our nation is in a dangerous position because of our deteriorating educational system, which threatens our dominence of technology and trade.

Here you used your own words, but you failed to credit the key ideas to Gardner.

(2) You can steal Gardner’s words by writing this:

Gardner thinks our nation is at risk due to a rising tide of mediocrity in education (63-4).

Here you gave Gardner credit for the ideas, but you also took his language without using quotation marks to show this.

What else must you know? In addition to knowing HOW to document, of course, you must also know WHAT to document. This is largely a matter of common sense, but can also be easily explained.

The term "common knowledge" sometimes requires explanation. It doesn't refer only to things everyone knows, like the name of America's first president. That would be an example of common knowledge, of course. But so would the details of a news story that was reported on most radio and TV stations and in most newspapers, even if it happened five years ago and most people have forgotten it. The definition of a medical or legal term would also be common knowledge, as would a discussion of the parts of the brain, or information from a chart of the chemical elements, or an explanation of the procedures for impeaching a president.

"Common knowledge" refers to any fact that appears in hundreds of different sources rather than exclusively in only one source or a narrow range of sources. The kinds of information given as examples here would appear in hundreds of different medical or legal textbooks, or even in high school biology and civics books. That's what makes these facts "common." It doesn't matter how many average people on the street know them.