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Randolph High School Media Center: Bibliographic Information

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Types of Plagiarism

  

Source: www.turnitin.com

Bilbliographic Information

When writing a research paper, credit must be given to the sources used in its preparation. In the paper, more than one source is listed on a “works cited” page. A bibliography or “works cited” page is a list of sources used and appears at the end of the paper on a separate page. Crediting of the source is also done in-text. It-text documentation must indicate exactly which of the sources listed o the “works cited” page items is the source of the passage. This is sometimes referred to as the “citation.” The format of the citation style used in Randolph High School is MLA (MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers) and is as follows:

Form:

  • On the “works cited” page, use proper bibliographical form to include all sources to which you referred in your paper.
  • Arrange entries in alphabetical order according to what comes first in the entry. (Disregard “a,” “an,” and “the”)
  • Use hanging indentation. Only the first line lines up with the left margin; all others line up about ½ inch indented.
  • Leave one space following a comma, parentheses, period, or colon
  • Use the most recent copyright date if the date of publication is not given on the title page
  • If more than one city is listed for place of publication, give only the first.
  • Double space between entries and between lines of each entry

Capitalization:

  • Capitalize the first, last and all principal words in titles.
  • Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions but not articles, prepositions or coordinating conjunctions unless they are the first or last word of a title.
  • If the first part of a hyphenated word needs to be capitalized, capitalize the other part(s) as well.

Punctuation:

  • Underline names of books, plays, long poems published as books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, films and radio and television program.
  • Place titles of magazine and newspaper articles, essays, short stories, chapters of books, and individual episodes of radio and television programs in quotation marks.

Abbreviations:

  • Use the standard two-capital-letter postal abbreviation for states in the publishing information (OR, NY, MA)/
  • Abbreviate all months except May, June, and July (Jan., Feb., Mar.).
  • Do not use the titles Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc. or their abbreviations. Do use titles like Jr. or III if part of the person’s name.
  • You may use common scholarly abbreviations and some abbreviations for selected publishers’ names. Consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers to determine which are appropriate.

Parenthetical Documentation: In MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Gibaldi and Achtert state that when writing a research paper, “You must document not only your direct quotes and paraphrases but also information and ideas” (155). They state, “The list of works cited at the end of your research paper plays an important role in your acknowledgment of sources, but it does not in itself provide sufficiently detailed and precise documentation. The most practical way to supply this information is to insert brief parenthetical acknowledgements in your paper wherever you incorporate another’s words, facts, or ideas. Usually the author’s last name and a page reference are enough to identify the source and the specific location from which you have borrowed material” (Gibaldi and Achtert 155). Full bibliographical information is then included at the end of the paper in Works Cited. Note the example given below for the source I used for this paragraph.

Works Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph, and Walter S. Achtert. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research papers. New York: MLA, 1988.

Follow these basic guidelines in using parenthetical documentation:

  • Insert the parenthetical documentation in the sentence where there is a normal pause, commonly at the end of a sentence. Place the sentence punctuation mark after the second parenthesis.
  • If you use the author’s name in the text like I did near the beginning of the preceding paragraph, the page number in parentheses is sufficient. (155)
  • If you do not use the author’s name in the text, put both the author’s last name and page number in parentheses as I did at the end of the preceding paragraph. (Gibaldi and Achtert 155).
  • If two or more of the authors have the same last name, include the first initial. (J. Allen 35).
  • If you are using two or more titles by the same author, include the title or a shortened form of it. (Allen, Since 25).
  • If there is no author, use the title or shortened version of it. (A Guide 245).
  • If you are citing from a multi-volume work, include the volume and pagination. (Churchill 3:365).
  • If it is a single page article or one arranged alphabetically like an encyclopedia, you may leave out the page numbers. (Puerto Rico).

For up-to-date information on bibliographic format, consult the following Web sites:

The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers: Citation Manager - (http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/hairston_awl/chapter4/deluxe.html)This site brings up lists of citation examples when you choose the MLA format.

Citation Styles Guide from Custom-Styles.org   https://custom-writing.org/blog/citation_styles/mla

There are also numerous sites on the Web that help create bibliographic citations, such as:

NoodleBib - (http://www.noodletools.com) is an interactive bibliography composer that automates the process of creating a bibliography or works cited list. It will also add and edit references on the fly. NoodleBib takes care of punctuation and producing a polished bibliography that is correctly formatted to the MLA format and ready to print or import directly into your Word document. It covers both print and online sources. However, it does not cover inline/parenthetical citations.

EasyBib - (http://www.easybib.com) is also an interactive bibliography composer similar to NoodleBib but is less complicated and therefore offers fewer options. One drawback is that it does not allow for adding or editing within the bibliography itself but must be done within a word processor. It also does not cover inline/parenthetical citations.