Preparing a Works Cited Page

Read:  Chapter 21 in The Penguin Handbook (pp. 347-411).

When you incorporate information from outside sources into your own work, you must prepare a Works Cited page listing the source material you have used. Sections 21b-i of The Penguin Handbook explains and models the MLA format (what to include in the entry, how to punctuate and order the information in the entry, and the order in which the entries should be listed) for entries on a Works Cited page. The specific bibliographic information you need to provide in each entry on a Works Cited page depends on the type of source material being listed. The Penguin Handbook provides models for the types of source material students most commonly use.

There is no need to memorize all the details of MLA documentation. Instead, when you are ready to prepare your Works Cited page, first determine what kind of source you are using: is it an article from a scholarly journal? an essay from an anthology? a book with an editor? a magazine? a book with two or more authors or just one author? a government publication? a personal interview? a newspaper? a pamphlet? a website? Then use the index on pp. 348-350 of The Penguin Handbook to find the model for that kind of source material.

As the models demonstrate, you'll need to have certain information about your source material to create the Works Cited page entry; therefore, when conducting research in a library, take the handbook with you so you can be sure to copy down the kind of information the model shows you need. For example, to enter a book, you will need to know the name of the author and/or editor, the place and year the book was published, and the name of the publishing company. To enter a scholarly journal, on the other hand, you will need to know the name of the author of the article, the date the journal was published, its volume number, and the first and last page numbers of the article you used.

No matter what kind of material you are using, including Internet websites, examine it carefully to find the bibliographic information you need. Include that information in your notes so that you will have it later when you prepare your Works Cited or Bibliography page.

Written Assignment

Using the index on pp. 348-350 of The Penguin Handbook, find the model for a Works Cited page entry for each type of material described below. Using the bibliographic information provided, prepare each entry following the modeled format and arrange the entries alphabetically, as they would appear on the Works Cited page of a researched essay. Use hanging indent (first line of the entry at left margin; second and any succeeding lines indented five spaces). Type rather than handwrite the entries so that you can practice formatting a Works Cited page on a word processor. (In addition to consulting Section 20c, you may also want to examine the sample Works Cited page on p. 408-411 of The Penguin Handbook.)

1. You have used information from the 1989 edition of the book entitled Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama. Alfred A. Knopf of New York published the book.



2. You have quoted from an article entitled "Kingdom of Gold" in the February 1996 issue of the magazine Natural History. The article was written by Enid Schildkrout and runs from page 36 through page 47 of the magazine.



3. You have paraphrased from a section of the 1989 article by Richard Yarborough entitled "The First-Person in Afro-American Literature." It appears on pages 105 through 121 in the collection Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990's. The collection was edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Patricia Redmond and published in Chicago by the University of Chicago Press.



4. You have summarized Carl Sagan's introduction to a book titled The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe. The book was written by Timothy Ferris. It was published by Morrow in New York in 1977. The introduction runs from page 13 to page 16.



5. You have used material from the article "Milton's Flock in Spenser's Fold" by Jane L. Riggs. The article was published in 1994 in volume 9 of the Kentucky Philological Review, a scholarly journal continuously paginated throughout all issues of a volume. The article is found on pages 35 through 38 and then continues on page 50.



6. You have cited statistics from an editorial titled "Fayette's Failing Freshmen" which appeared on page 5 of section E in the Lexington Herald Leader on Sept. 6, 2000.



7. You have quoted from volume 5 of the 11 volume series entitled The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. The series was originally published by Simon and Schuster in 1953 in New York and was reprinted in 1995.



8. On August 17, 2000, you interviewed a high school teacher named Martha Majors for information on the Kentucky Education Reform Act. In your essay, you have used and cited several things she said.



9. You have used material you found on March 5, 2001 on the Sierra Club website on the Internet at <http:// www.sierraclub.org> The article had no author and its title was "Our Endangered National Parks". The article was posted on Jan. 20, 2001.



10. You have used an essay from the Eng. 104 course anthology, Fairy Tales, Myths and Other Archetypal Stories, entitled "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious" by Carl Jung.