ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Writing Elements and Process Videos 47 videos

Choosing a Topic
1733 Views

Choosing a topic can be extremely difficult—even more difficult than deciding which Ben & Jerry's flavor to try next. No, scratch that. Nothing w...

Escritura no Fácil
246 Views

No busque una palabra negativa. Sino una palabra que pueda ser positiva. Tales son "no se caiga", " no molestes a tus maestros" "no se coma toda...

How to Avoid Repetition in an Essay
940 Views

Reading repetitive essays can bore teachers to death because the essays repeat the same ideas repetitively. You don’t want your teacher to get bo...

See All

MLA Style Guidelines 8347 Views


Share It!


Description:

This video goes over MLA citations: where to put page numbers, how to set up a works cited page, and how to cite with long quotes.

Language:
English Language
Common Core Standards:

Transcript

00:03

MLA style a la shmoop MLA is not that hip-hop artist you saw

00:09

[hip hop singer twerking on a stage] twerking at the VMA MLA actually stands for Modern Language Association but

00:15

they're about more than simply banishing all the thees, thine and doths from

00:19

our language these folks are devoted to all things language and literature and

00:23

that includes citation MLA style is used in almost all English and lit classes [hand picking up an MLA style book from a shelf]

00:28

it's pretty simple too all you need is the main body of your paper and a

00:31

special page devoted to the text you've quoted also known as works cited that's

00:36

a whole page one nice thing about MLA is that you don't even need a title page [piece of paper floating in the air by the seaside]

00:40

they're all about saving paper four out of five trees recommend MLA when citing

00:45

sources in the body of your paper you'll include the author's last name and the

00:48

page number of your quote putting them both into a little front seat sandwich

00:52

after whatever it is you're citing mayo and relish optional if you mention the [A note displaying citing sources with mayo and relish pots]

00:56

author's name when you introduce your quote or reference then you just include

00:59

the page number in your parentheses your parenthetical citation is always after

01:04

the quotation mark your page number is always inside the parentheses and your [piece of writing highlighting page number inside a parentheses]

01:08

period is always after the parentheses but of course there's always an

01:12

exception when citing more than four lines of prose or three lines of verse [large piece of text highlighted in yellow]

01:16

you'll put it into a block quote in this case your page number will come after

01:21

the ending punctuation of your quote MLA discourages the use of footnotes but you

01:25

can use them for bibliographic or explanatory notes so if you want someone [a judge sentencing a piece of paper with a footprint]

01:30

to put your paper down and run and grab another book use a footnote same if you [woman throwing a book and running away]

01:34

go off on a tangent like talking about that time you were in the basement of a

01:38

restaurant New York City singing show tunes not that we know anything about [a man in a restaurant singing]

01:43

tangents or show tunes frankly at the end you need to include a work cited

01:47

page it starts out simple put the words works cited centered at the top of the [piece of paper with works cited highlighted in yellow]

01:53

page no bold no quotes nothing flashy then your sources need to be listed

01:57

alphabetically by authors last name and you should utilize what they call the

02:01

hanging indent it's like a dangling symbol in that it sound a little

02:05

dirty but it's not that's MLA style no title page always include your page [MLA style guidelines on a book page]

02:10

number inside parenthetical citations and forget the work cited page which uses

02:14

hanging indents beats Gangnam style anyway [man dancing to gangnam style]

Related Videos

Wordiness
15168 Views

Want even more deets on wordiness? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Tenses
4974 Views

Want even more deets on tenses? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Semicolons
10246 Views

Want even more deets on semicolons? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Ratio of Asking Questions Versus Giving Answers
718 Views

Asking questions can help spice up an essay. Just make sure you don't get too spicy and forget to answer those questions. You don't want to leave y...

Parallel Structure
16041 Views

This video defines parallel structure and analyzes what makes it powerful (spoiler alert: sticking to a consistent part of speech, like infinitives...