Exercise: Works Cited Page
 
Instructions

Come to class with four copies of a properly formatted Works Cited (using MLA citation format). This page must include entries for all of the sources you have gathered for your research project. That includes both secondary sources from which you will be taking quotations and any primary sources you know you will be using in your project. Do not list tertiary sources (encyclopedias, book reviews, and the like) because you should not be quoting these in your project.

 
Guidelines

Follow the citation guidelines you can access on OWL or in your writer’s handbook. Obviously, since you are not writing anything, format is everything for this assignment. All of the formatting must be correct. Some tips:

1) The works cited should list every source alphabetically by author; do not divide your sources into categories.

2) Like everything else in your essay, it must be double-spaced.

3) Every entry must have a hanging indent of a half-inch; you can make a hanging indent by using your format menu — go to “Paragraph” and then look under “Special” on the right. Do not under any circumstances use the Tab button to make a hanging indent. Doing so can cause endless format problems, to the point where you will want to hurl your computer out a window because of the random white space showing up everywhere.

4) Keep in mind that parenthetical citations and works cited entries work together. The parenthetical citation tells us where to find a specific quotation, while the works cited entry tells us where to find the source. That means that a works cited entry should not include the specific page number on whichi we can find a particular passage. However, if the source is an essay from a book or journal, the entry must provide the page range of the entire essay.

5) For articles you acquire through databases, MLA says to provide a DOI, but if a DOI is unavailable, you must provide a URL. However, please make this a reasonably short URL that directs us to the site, not one that goes on for three lines.