At university, just writing great essays full of passion and insight is not enough. I know, delusional, isn’t it? Here, you will shortly become fast acquainted with, and (of course, enmity with) the wonders of citations, and in particular MLA. Now referencing is a considerable amount of marks in both formative and summative assignments, so it is worth installing within your mind instead of leaving it for 11:32am in a panic (I talk from experience). The following are some quick and easy tips to make sure you mostly get it right.

 

 

A typical citation looks somewhat like this – we’ve annotated it to explain all the technical bits and bobs:

 

Carter, Angela1. The Magic Toyshop2. 1st ed3. London4: Virago, 19816. Print7.

 

1. Name, last followed by first. When listing multiple texts, organise them alphabetically by last name

2. The title of the text, italicised

3. Number edition of the text, but usually this is only relevant if it is a 2nd or 3rd edition

4. Placed where published, followed by a colon, then the name of the Publisher

5. Hanging indent by 1.27 cm for subsequent lines

6. Year published preceded by a comma

7. Format of work- print, webpage etc.

 

 

 There is a slight difference with journal articles or essays:

 

 

Hall, Stuart. “New ethnicities”.1 Modern Criticism and Theory: A  Reader. Lodge, David and Nigel Wood.2 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson, 2008. 381-591.3 Print.

1. Essay title in quotation marks

2. With multiple authors, only the first name is inverted

3. State the pages that you used specifically

 

 

In the essay itself you’ll need to reference your sources to avoid the horrors of plagiarism

 

(Irigaray1, 5312)

1. Last name of author, unless had just mentioned author in sentence itself (e.g. “Irigaray states that…” in that case ignore this step)

2. Page number of your reference.

 

 

 For more information about MLA referencing, an easy guide which covers every type of reference you could need – whether it’s a book, film, journal, or web article – can be found online: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/