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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 Two or Three Authors (154)

The general format and example below refer to a book with two or three authors. 
 
If you are dealing with two or three editors instead of two or three authors,  insert the names of the editors into the place where the authors' names are now, followed by a comma and the word "eds." without the quotation marks.  The rest of the format remains the same.
 
General Format 
 
In-Text Citation
(Author Surname and Author Surname page number) - Always cite both names
 
Works Cited:

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

  
Example 
 
In-Text Citation:
(Butcher, Mineka and Hooley 46)
 
Works Cited:

Butcher, James N., Susan Mineka, and Jill M. Hooley. Abnormal Psychology. 12th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004. Print.