English 102 Students
English 102 students should use the following guidelines for citing electronic sources in their papers. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (MLA) covers electronic sources of materials (section 4.9). These recommendations are for electronic sources online or on CD-ROM. Internet sources are cited in a somewhat different manner. Examples provided reflect databases available in the LRC.
Citing Sources from Electronic Databases
Through subscription services, Richland makes available many databases that allow students to quickly retrieve electronic versions of articles previously printed in periodicals. To cite these sources correctly in MLA format, you'll need to include information about both the original paper publication and the particular electronic version you accessed.
Guidelines for Works Cited Lists for Articles from Electronic Databases
Below is a summary of the MLA guidelines for Works Cited entries for these sources and samples using sources from Richland's databases. For more detailed information, see the MLA Handbook for Writers 6th edition, section 5.9.7, page 662 of the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing 4th edition or Appendix A of The Curious Researcher. Also, some of the databases themselves offer citation advice through their "Help" links.
For Works Cited entries for these sources, begin with the standard information for that printed type of printed source; that is, follow the guidelines and format for a magazine article, a scholarly journal article, or a newspaper article:
- Author (if listed)
- Title of the article, in quotation marks
- Title of the journal or magazine, underlined
- For magazines or newspapers, date of the original print publication; for scholarly journals, the volume and year
- Original page numbers. For articles longer than one page with only the starting page number and the total number of pages provided (e.g. "p140. 7p."), give just the first page number followed by a hyphen (e.g. 140- )
Important: Know where you've been! Since Richland subscribes to several services and each service provides many different databases, be sure to note exactly where you retrieved each article.
Following this, add:
- The name of the database, underlined (such as Academic Search Elite or WilsonSelectPlus)
- The name of the subscription service providing that database (e.g., EBSCO, OCLC FirstSearch, NewsBank )
- The location of the subscriber (Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning Resource Center, Decatur, IL)
- The date you accessed the database
The URL of the subscription service is optional. Most Richland English instructors prefer students to omit this URL, since the address is of no use to readers who don't have access to the Richland databases.
Examples for a Works Cited List
Koch, Kathy."Cheating in Schools." CQ Researcher 10.32 (2000): 745-768.
CQ Researcher Online. CQ Press. Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 2 Mar. 2007.
"Character Education." Issues and Controversies On File
25 Oct. 2002. FACTS.com. Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning
Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 22 Oct. 2004.
Chase, Kimberly. "Teachers Fight Against Internet Plagiarism."
Christian Science Monitor 2 Mar. 2004: 12. NewsFile.
NewsBank. Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning
Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 5 Oct. 2004.
Goldsborough, Reid. "Preventing the Pall of Web Plagiarism."
Community College Week 13 Sept. 2004: 13. Academic
Search Elite. EBSCO. Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning
Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 5 Oct. 2004.
Pincus, Holly Seirup, and Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin.
" Faculty Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty:
A Multidimensional Scaling Analysis." Journal of Higher
Education 74 (2003): 196-209. WilsonSelectPlus.
OCLC FirstSearch. Richland CC, Kitty Lindsay Learning
Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 5 Oct. 2004.
Willmott, Chris J.R., and Tim M. Harrison. "An Exercise to
Teach Bioscience Students About Plagiarism." Journal of
Biological Education 37.3 (2003): 139- . Health Source:
Nursing/Academic Edition. EBSCO. Richland CC, Kitty
Lindsay Learning Resource Center, Decatur, IL. 22 Oct. 2004.
Guidelines for In-Text Citations for Articles from Electronic Databases
Follow the same guidelines for in-text citations you would use for a print source. For more complete information, see the MLA Handbook for Writers 6th edition, section 6, pages 643-662 of the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing 4th edition, or Appendix A of The Curious Researcher.
In general, if the author's name is not included in your sentence, add it to the end of your cited information in parentheses. If the original article in print was more than one page long and original page numbers are evident for the specific information you are citing, include that page number in the parentheses.
If you accessed a PDF version of your article, which is essentially a picture of the original print article, you should be able to determine the original page number. But for HTML versions, which are reformatted versions of the original article, you will not be able to determine original page numbers, and print-out pages will vary substantially depending on printer settings, so do not include a page number in the parentheses for these articles. If the paragraphs are numbered, use those instead of page numbers in the parentheses, with par. before the numeral. Do not number pages or paragraphs yourself. Since HTML articles with unnumbered pages or paragraphs are the most common full-text articles in our databases, very often you will have no numeral at all for your in-text citation. If you have a choice between HTML or PDF versions, choose the PDF version.
Citing Information from Internet Sites
Citing information from Internet sites can be difficult because of the lack of uniformity in web presentations—not all sites provide all of the information we'd like to have. Below is a summary of the MLA guidelines for Works Cited entries for these sources and samples. For more complete information, see the MLA Handbook for Writers 6th edition, section 5.9., or page 643 of the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing 4th edition, or Appendix A of The Curious Researcher.
Guidelines for Works Cited Lists for Information from Internet Cites
To make a Works Cited entry for information from an Internet site, the general rule is to list the usual information (or its electronic equivalent) you'd give for a print source, as much as possible:
- Author
- Title of the specific article or Internet page
- Name of the Internet site or online journal or newservice
- Publisher or sponsoring organization of the site
- Date of publication or posting (following formats for scholarly journals, magazine articles, or newspapers, as applicable)
- Page numbers or paragraph numbers (if supplied by the site—do not number pages or paragraphs yourself).
To this information add:
- The date you accessed this site
- The URL (the Web address) in angle brackets.
- Excessively long URLs can be shortened down to show just the site's search or home page.
- If a URL needs to break over two lines, break at a slash but don't include a hyphen.
- To keep your Word program from automatically deleting your brackets and underlining your URL, go to Tools, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat, and click off "replace Internet and network paths with hyperlinks."
- To fix an AutoCorrected URL that has been turned into a hyperlink, put your cursor after the last letter and tap Backspace once.
After a thorough search of the page(s) omit any of the elements that cannot be found. Note that some information (such as the sponsoring organization or the date of posting) may be in less-than-obvious locations, such as in small print at the bottom of Websites, or only on the home page of that site.
Guidelines for Works Cited Lists for Periodical Articles on Internet Sites
Also, it is possible to access articles from some periodicals off their own Internet sites, and from our subscription services, and from paper copies. For example, articles from the New York Times are available through EBSCO's Academic Search Elite, and from New York Times on the Web, and in paper in the Kitty Lindsay Learning Resource Center. Each of these would have a different Works Cited entry; you need to follow the citation guidelines for the version you read.
Examples for a Works Cited List
Bugeja, Michael. "Using Online Techniques to Thwart
Plagiarism." CharacterClearinghouse. 2000. Center
for the Study of Values in College Student Development.
8 Oct. 2004 <http://www.collegevalues.org/practices.cfm>.
Freedman, Morris. "Don't Blame the Internet for Plagiarism."
Education Week on the Web 2 Dec. 1998. 8 Oct. 2004
< http://www.edweek.org/ew/1998/14freed.h18>.
Haffner, Katie. "Lessons in the School of Cut and Paste."
New York Times on the Web 28 June 2001. 8 Oct. 2004
< http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/ techreview.html>.
"Plagiarism Today." Plagiarism.org. 2004. iParadigms.
20 October 2004 <www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism.html>.
"Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism." The Staley Library.
16 Sept. 2004. Millikin U. 8 Oct. 2004
< http://www.millikin.edu/staley/plagiarism.html>.
Guidelines for In-Text Citations for Internet Sources
Follow the same guidelines for in-text citations you would use for a print source. For more complete information, see the guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers 6th edition, section 6, pages 643-662 of the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing 4th edition, or Appendix A of The Curious Researcher.
In general, if the first element of the Works Cited entry (author's name; if no author, then Internet page title) is not included in your sentence, add it to the end of your cited information in parentheses. If the page or paragraphs are numbered on the Internet site, include that number in the parentheses (using par. in front of paragraph numerals). Usually, however, you will have no page or paragraph numbers to include with Internet sites. Do not number pages or paragraphs yourself.
