CCLA01: Strangers to Ourselves: the Critical Study of Narrative

MLA Style

When writing academic essays, you will need to document the sources that you use, giving both page numbers for paraphrased or quoted information, and publication details for each source referred to. In order to make these references consistent, most researchers adopt one particular documentation style. In the Humanities, especially in North America, Modern Language Association Style (MLA Style) has become popular in recent years. MLA Style has some drawbacks, and indeed many publishers dislike it. Its big advantage for a student user, however, is that it eliminates the needs for footnotes or endnotes.

The two basic features of MLA Style are parenthetical documentation and bibliography format.

In the course of your essay, you may need to quote from or paraphrase a source--a short story, an academic article or book, a movie or perhaps a document on the internet. Rather than using a footnote or endnote, in MLA style you just place a reference in parenthesis (brackets) immediately after the quoted or paraphrased material. An example in an essay of my own is:

Lee's speech provides a startling example of what the Indian critic Ashis Nandy has termed the "shared culture" of colonialism which "may not always begin with the establishment of alien rule in a society and end with the departure of the alien rulers from the colony"(2). As Nandy himself recognises, this shared culture was marked by an "ideology of male-adulthood" (17). Feminism's recognition of gender as "one of the fundamental categories of cultural production" (Showalter 9) should encourage us to investigate the manner in which Lee effortlessly aligns gender and nationalism, boys' school and emergent nation.

Note that here all references to page numbers in the two sources are given in parenthesis after the quoted material. If Ashis Nandy's name is mentioned in the essay itself, and it is clear that the quotation is from his book, there is no need to give his name inside the brackets. In the case of Elaine Showalter's book the author's name is not mentioned in the essay itself, and it is therefore given in parenthesis.

In using parenthetical documentation, include as much information as necessary in the parenthesis, but no more. For instance, if the bibliography contained two or more works by Showalter, it would be necessary to give the title of the work referred to:

Lee's speech provides a startling example of what the Indian critic Ashis Nandy has termed the "shared culture" of colonialism which "may not always begin with the establishment of alien rule in a society and end with the departure of the alien rulers from the colony"(2). As Nandy himself recognises, this shared culture was marked by an "ideology of male-adulthood" (17). Feminism's recognition of gender as "one of the fundamental categories of cultural production" (Showalter, "Introduction: The Rise of Gender" 9) should encourage us to investigate the manner in which Lee effortlessly aligns gender and nationalism, boys' school and emergent nation.

Remember to include references after paraphrased, as well as quoted material.

MLA Style and all other documentation styles insist on a certain order and formatting of all publication information in the bibliography. I've reproduced the way to format some of the more common types of publication below. For an exhaustive list, consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The text used by many Core Writing Programme modules, A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker, contains a useful section on MLA Style, and may be more digestible than the MLA Handbook.

Jeyaretnam, Philip. Abraham's Promise. Singapore: Times, 1995.

Wee W.-L., C.J. "Contending with Primordialism: The 'Modern' Construction of Postcolonial Singapore." Positions 1 (1993): 715-744.

Adorno, Theodor. "Commitment." Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents. Ed. Dennis Walder. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. 89-98.

Koh Buck Song. "Jeya Dishes Out a Dusty Old Recording." Straits Times, 5 June 1997. 39.

This is more difficult to summarize. Try MLA's own guide to Documenting Internet Sources. The site uses frames, so you'll need to first follow the link to "MLA Style," second the link to "Frequently Asked Questions about MLA Style," and lastly the link to "HOW DO I DOCUMENT SOURCES FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN MY WORKS-CITED LIST?"

Finally, remember that all references in the bibliography should be placed in alphabetic order, not in order of appearance.