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MLA Citation Style

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About Citing Books

When you're finding books for your research, make note of the author name(s), book title, publication date, publisher, and place of publication.

The medium of publication for all “hard copy” books is Print.

For each type of source in this guide, both the general form and a specific example will be provided.

The following format will be used:

Parenthetical Citation - entry that appears in the body of your paper.

Works Cited - entry that appears at the end of your paper.

Information on citing and several of the examples were drawn from the MLA Handbook (7th ed.)

Numbers in parentheses refer to specific pages in the manual.

Book with One Author (148-153)

The general format below refers to a book with one author.
 
If you are dealing with one editor instead of one author,  insert the editor's name in the place where the author's name is now, followed by a comma and the word "ed." without the quotation marks. The rest of the format remains the same.
 
General Format
 
In-Text Citation:
(Author Surname page number)
 
Works Cited:

Author Surname, First Name. Book Title: Subtitle. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Medium.

 
Example
 
In-Text Citation:
(Mills 146-55)
 
Works Cited:

Mills, John A. Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology. New York: New York

      University P, 1998. Print.