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Lewis - English 10 Semester Paper: Citing Your Sources

Resources for Mr. Lewis' "The Canterbury Tales" assignment can be found here!

Citing Images MLA Style

To cite a digital image, find the following pieces of information: 

  • The name of the creator of the digital image
  • The title of the digital image (If there is no title, include a description of the image)
  • The title of the website that the image was found on
  • The names of any other contributors responsible for the digital image
  • Version of the image (if applicable)
  • Any numbers associated with the image (if applicable)
  • The publisher of the image
  • The date the image was created or published
  • The location of the image, such as a URL

If the picture was found using Google Images, do not cite Google Images as the publisher. Instead, click on the picture and use the information from the website that is hosting the picture.

When including the URL in the citation, omit “http://” and “https://” from the site’s address. 

Examples: 

Creator’s Last name, First name. “Title of the digital image.” Title of the website, First name Last name of any contributors, Version (if applicable), Number (if applicable), Publisher, Publication date, URL.

Vasquez, Gary A. Photograph of Coach K with Team USA. NBC Olympics,USA Today Sports, 5 Aug. 2016, www.nbcolympics.com/news/rio-olympics-coach-ks-toughest-test-or-lasting-legacy.

General Guidelines for Citing Electronic Sources

Here are some common features you should try and find before citing electronic sources in MLA style. Not every Web page or database article will provide all of the following information. However, collect as much of the following information as possible both for your citations and for your research notes:

  • Author and/or editor names (if available)
  • Article name in quotation marks.
  • Title of the website, project, or journal in italics.
  • Any version numbers available, including editions (ed.), revisions, posting dates, volumes (vol.), or issue numbers (no.).
  • Publisher information, including the publisher name and publishing date.
  • Take note of any page numbers (p. or pp.) or paragraph numbers (par. or pars.).
  • Date you accessed the material (Date Accessed).
  • URL (without the https://)  DOI or permalink.

MLA Bibliography Citations

In the MLA style, you create a Works Cited page at the end of your paper. Here are some examples on how to cite your sources. 
 

Basic book

Jacobs, Alan. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Oxford UP, 2011.

Book with two authors

Casell, Kay Ann and Uma Hiremath. Reference and Information Services in the 21st Century: An Introduction. Neal-Schuman, 2004.

Authors should be listed in the order they are listed on the title page.

Book with three authors

Robbins, Chandler S., et al. Birds of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. Golden, 1966.

When a source has three or more authors, only the first one shown in the source is given. It is followed by et al..

Journal article with
one author

Asafu-Adjaye, Prince. “Private Returns on Education in Ghana: Estimating the Effects of Education on Employability in Ghana.” African Sociological Review, vol. 16, no. 1, CODESRIA, 2012, pp. 120-138. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/24487691.

Omit “http://” or “https://” from the URL when including it in the citation. It is highly recommended to include the date you accessed the article.

Journal article with
two authors

Zhang, H., and K. Merikangas. "A frailty model of segregation analysis: understanding the familial transmission of alcoholism." Biometrics, vol. 56, no. 3, 2000, pp. 815-823. www.biometrics.tibs.org/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2016.

Omit “http://” or “https://” from the URL when including it in the citation. It is highly recommended to include the date you accessed the article.

Book in database

​Cateforis, Theodore. Are We Not New Wave? Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s. University of Michigan Press, 2011. Project Muse,
muse.jhu.edu.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/book/2441. Accessed 5 Oct. 2016.

Omit “http://” or “https://” from the URL when including it in the citation. It is highly recommended to include the date you accessed the article.

Newspaper article in database

Bennish, Steve, and Laura A. Bischoff. “Voters Support Ohio Library Building Boom.” Dayton Daily News, 24 June 2016. Ebscohost,
 search.ebscohost.com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url,cpid&custid=nypl&db=nfh&AN=2W63144501246&site=ehost-live. Accessed 5 Oct. 2016.

Omit “http://” or “https://” from the URL when including it in the citation. It is highly recommended to include the date you accessed the article.

MLA In-Text Citations

For in-text citations, put the information about the source in parentheses within the text of the paper, rather than in a footnote or end note. Note that the punctuation for the sentence goes AFTER the final parenthesis, like this: (Smith 20-21).

Basic Citation 
Cite the author's last name and the page number where the information
you cited is found. 		 (Smith 77).
No Author
Provide an abbreviated title for the source. Italics book titles 
and put quotations about article titles.  		 This book... (Long 221). 
This article... (“Long” 110).  
No Page Number
Provide author's name only. If there are no page numbers, 
you can not invent any. 		 (Smith).
Two Authors (Smith and Davis 17).

Why Do We Cite?

We cite our sources so that our readers can easily find the sources to which we are referring; if that information were not given in a standardized format, we would all have great difficulty finding the sources on our own.