Jerz > Writing > Academic > BibBuilder > Article (or chapter; online or print)
Lastnamerson, Arthur. "Academic Journal Article: Capitalize the Article Title and Put It in Quotation Marks." Title of Journal. 123.1 (2011): 123-45. Name of Database. Web. 9 Aug. 2011. <http://optional-but-often-useful.url/ask-your-professor.html>.
Lastnamerson, Arthur. "Magazine Article: Capitalize the Title and Put It in Quotation Marks." Title of Magazine. 5 Aug. 2011: 123-45. Print.
Lastnamerson, Arthur. "Newspaper Article: Capitalize the Title and Put It in Quotation Marks." Post-Gazette [Littletown, PA]. 5 Aug. 2011: A1 123-45. Print.
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Click labels on the left side of the form. Tips will appear in this space, to help you determine what to type for each blank.
Note: The BibBuilder is a helpful guide, but it does not attempt to implement every possible quirk and feature of MLA Style; neither does it attempt to correct anything that might have been mistyped in the box. ("Garbage in, garbage out.")
For help formatting your Works Cited page, see MLA Style Papers: Step-by-step Instructions for Formatting Research Papers.
Write the author's family name first, followed by given names.
Write the first author's name in reversed order (surname first, followed by given names). Write the other names in normal order.
A group whose individual members are not listed on the title page is treated as a corporate author. Give the name of the group. See MLA Handbook, 7th ed., 5.5.5.
When the author is a government agency, give the name of the place being governed, followed by a period; then give the name of the agency.
For a more detailed treatment of government publications, see MLA Handbook, 7th ed., 5.5.20.
If the author is a corporation or organization (such as Microsoft or the Sierra Club), see the "Group" option.
If the source does not name an author, but does provide the name of an editor or translator, put that person's name in the author slot, with a label identifying the person's role.
Capitalize the title of the article, and enclose in quotation marks.
Capitalize the first and last word of the title, as well as all
In the middle of the title, lowercase:
In MLA Style we follow standard rules for formatting and capitalizing, regardless of how the title appears on the cover. Thus, if the article includes the word "ROBOTS" in decorative letters, with "machines in man's image" in smaller print, in MLA Style we would use a colon and space to separate the title and subtitle, and standardize the capitalization thus:
Robots: Machines in Man's Image
Note: If the title of your article includes the title of a book or other work that you would ordinarily italicize, you'll have to format the BibBuilder output in order to add italics.
Articles and chapters appear as part of larger works, such as journals, magazines, or newspapers. Capitalize and italicize the title of the periodical.
Capitalize the first and last word of the title, as well as all
In the middle of the title, lowercase:
In MLA Style we follow standard rules for formatting and capitalizing, regardless of how the title appears on the cover. Thus, if the cover of the journal reads "ROBOTS" in decorative letters, with "machines in man's image" in smaller print, in MLA Style we would use a colon and space to separate the title and subtitle, and standardize the capitalization thus:
Robots: Machines in Man's Image
Einstein, Albert. Letters of Albert Einstein. Ed. D. B. Jones.
Label the editor, translator, or compiler with an appropriate abbrevation (Ed., Trans., or Comp.), and include the person's name, in the usual order.
If the source identifies no author, leave the "Ed/Tras" slot blank and see No Author instead.
Options:
Scholarly journals have a volume number, that starts with 1 (in the periodical's first year of publication) and goes up each year. You may find it the upper right corner, or just beneath the large-print title of the publication, or as part of the library database entry that led you to this specific article.
Current MLA style calls for the volume number, without any label such as "#" or "Vol.", and without any reference to the season or month.
Although newspapers and magazines may publish volume numbers, for these periodicals MLA Style actually asks for the publication date instead. Be as speciric as possible, in order to help your reader locate the exact document you are citing.
Every issue in a particular annual volume will have a sequential issue number, whether the periodical comes out several times a year or daily. The issue number is more precise than a date range (such as "March/April" or "Spring").
If you cannot find a volume and issue number, then the article you want to cite is probably not from a periodical. (You may want to rethink whether it's really a credible source.)
For a print newspaper that has a morning and an afternoon edition, or a magazine that publishes different content in different countries, or a website with content that may hourly, your goal is to be as precise as you can, in order to make sure that whoever reads your paper will be able to find the exact article that you used in your research.
Current MLA style asks us to use the issue number without any kind of label such as "#" or "Iss."
MLA style handles the dates of academic articles a little differently from the dates of magazine or newspaper articles.
If you are citing a magazine or newspaper article, leave the "Year" slot blank, and instead, enter the date in the "Volume or Date" slot.
If you are citing an article in an academic journal, put the four-digit year in the "Year" slot, and put the volume number in the "Volume or Date" slot.
If you are citing an online work that you found through a database, name the database here.
Academic Search Elite Google Book Search
The point of citing any source is to help your reader find it. Citing a "database service" such as EBSCOhost is not specific enough, since different libraries may use EBSCOhost to deliver data to the users, but they may not subscribe to the same databases you used -- such as the MLA International Bibliography or JSTOR. , but they may not subscribe to
EBSCOhost is like the cab driver who will take you to a specific address; so, citing a database service such as EBSCOhost instead of a specific database is like giving a cab's license plate instead of an address.
What physical form does your source take? The most common choices are
The above is just a sample; if your medium is not listed here, describe it as best as you can. (A reference librarian or your teacher can help if you have an unusual source.)
Electronic sources tend to change over time. If you are citing a web page or online database, include the date that you last accessed your source.
5 Apr. 2011Use three-letter abbreviations for the months, but spell out May, June, and July.
5 May 2011
20 June 2011
1 Oct. 2011
The 7th Edition of the MLA Handbook states that it is up to the instructor to decide whether URLs are required.
People are far more likely to search for material than type long URLs, so giving a title "The iPad Goes to College This Fall," the date 27 July 2010, and the and the publisher's name "CNN.com" is far more useful than a long URL.
If you are citing a article that you happened to locate through an online database, the URL will be full of long, imposible-to-hyphenate lines of random letters, generated just for you when you logged in with your ID and password. Such a URL is useless for anyone else.
However, if the page you are citing includes a short, useful URL, it may help your reader tremendously if you choose to include the URL. (Note that the URL is the full address of the specific page. Simply listing "cnn.com" or "setonhill.edu" is not specific enough.)
If you need to reak your URL across two lines, don't add a hyphen; just break the URL after a slash, and include the initial "http://".