Guide to
Documentation
Somers High School
Somers, CT
September 2003
1
Guide to Documentation
Somers High School
Table of Contents
Page
Introduction...................................................................................... 3
How to Document Your Work with a Works Cited Page..................3
Preparing the List of Works Cited.................................................... 4
Examples of Works Cited - Print Sources........................................ 5
Examples of Works Cited - Nonprint Sources..................................6
Examples of Works Cited - Electronic Sources................................ 7
How to Document Your Work with Parenthetical Documentation.... 8
Guidelines for Parenthetical Documentation..................................... 8
Avoiding Plagiarism..........................................................................9
Examples of Plagiarism.....................................................................9
Rules for Avoiding Plagiarism........................................................ 10
Abbreviations for MLA Documentation..........................................11
Works Cited....................................................................................12
Acknowledgments...........................................................................12
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Introduction
The Somers High School faculty agrees that using a single method of documentation school-wide
is best for our students. We have chosen to use the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers, 6th edition as our model. Once you learn the MLA style, you will know how to document
sources for all the research projects that you will undertake at SHS. This booklet is designed to
explain the MLA style and then to be used as a reference tool.
MLA is the style of documenting sources that is recommended by the Modern Language
Association. The MLA style has two major features. First, all sources cited are listed at the end of
a research paper or project on a page entitled "Works Cited," instead of "Bibliography." Second,
material borrowed from another source is documented within the text by a brief parenthetical
reference that directs readers to the full citation in the list of works cited.
✎
How to Document Your Work
with a Works Cited Page
A list of works cited appears at the end of your paper and, as this title suggests, lists only the works
you have referred to in your paper. MLA prefers the term "Works Cited" to the term
"Bibliography," which you probably have used in the past. "Bibliography" is limited because the
word literally means a description of books. "Works Cited" can accommodate the variety of
sources (articles, films, computer software, Internet sites, etc.) that students use in today's research.
In a research paper that uses MLA style, the list of works cited is the only place where readers will
find complete information about the sources you have used. For that reason, your list must be
thorough and accurate. To prepare the list of works cited, follow the general guidelines on page
three, which are from the book A Guide to MLA Documentation by Joseph F. Trimmer.
_________________
Trimmer, Joseph F. A Guide to MLA Documentation, Fifth Edition. ©1999 by Houghton Mifflin
Company. Used with permission.
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Preparing the List of Works Cited
1.
Paginate the Works Cited page as a continuation of your text. If the conclusion of your paper
appears on page 8, begin your list on page 9.
2.
Double-space between successive lines of an entry and between entries.
3.
Begin the first line of an entry flush left, and indent successive lines five spaces or one-half
inch.
4.
List entries in alphabetical order according to the last name of the author.
5.
If you are listing more than one work by the same author, alphabetize the works according to
title (excluding the articles a, an, and the). Instead of repeating the author's name, type three
hyphens and a period, and then give the title.
6.
Underline the titles of works published independently—books, plays, long poems, pamphlets,
periodicals, films.
7.
Although you do not need to underline the spaces between words, a continuous line is easier
to type and guarantees that all features of the title are underlined. Type a continuous line
under titles unless you are instructed to do otherwise.
8.
If you are citing a book whose title includes the title of another book, underline the main title,
but do not underline the other title (for example, A Casebook on Ralph Ellison's Invisible
Man).
9.
Use quotation marks to indicate titles of short works that appear in larger works (for example,
"Minutes of Glory." African Short Stories). Also use quotation marks for song titles and for
titles of unpublished works, including dissertations, lectures, and speeches.
10. Use arabic numerals except with names of monarchs (Elizabeth II) and except for the
preliminary pages of a work (ii-xix), which are traditionally numbered with roman numerals.
11. Use lowercase abbreviations to identify the parts of a work, for example: vol. for volume, a
named translator, trans., and a named editor, ed. However, when these designations follow a
period, they should be capitalized (for example, Woolf, Virginia. A Writer's Diary. Ed.
Leonard Woolf).
12. Whenever possible, use appropriate shortened forms for the publisher's name (Random
instead of Random House). A list of selected publishers is included in your Guide to
Documentation on page 10.
13. Although it is becoming increasingly common to use a single space after end punctuation,
separate author, title, and publication information with a period followed by two spaces.
.............................
The Works Cited page for this booklet is on page 11. Use the Works Cited page on page 11 as a
model for your Works Cited page.
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Examples of Works Cited - Print Sources
The following examples show the most commonly cited print sources:
 Book with single author
Ellis, Richard. The Search for the Giant Squid. New York: Lyons, 1998.
 Book with two or more authors
Canfield, Jack, Mark Victor Hansen, and Kimberly Kirberger. Chicken Soup for the Teenage
Soul. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1997.
If there are more than three authors, you may name only the first and add "et al." ("and others")
or you may give all names in full in the order in which they appear on the title page.
Fuller, Harry J., et al. The Plant World. New York: Holt, 1972.
 Book with an editor
Gallo, Donald R., ed. Visions. New York: Bantam, 1987.
 Book without an author
National Geographic Atlas of the World. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic,
1992.
 An article in an encyclopedia or reference book
Gruber, Samuel H. "Shark." World Book Encyclopedia. 1998.
Oxbury, John. "Epilepsy." The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Ed. Richard L. Gregory.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.
When citing less familiar reference books, especially those that have appeared in only one edition,
give full publication information. Unsigned articles should begin with the article title and continue
as shown above.
 Magazine articles - weekly or every two weeks
Brownlee, Shannon. "Inside the Teen Brain." U.S. News and World Report 9 Aug. 1999:
44-54.
 Magazine articles - monthly
Hine, Thomas. "The Rise and Decline of the Teenager." American Heritage Sept. 1999: 70-83.
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 Newspaper articles
Endrst, James. "Fans Always Will Love Lucy." Hartford Courant 27 Apr. 1989: A2.
The section (A) is listed before the page number (2) if the newspaper is divided into sections.
 Pamphlets
Northeast Utilities. 47 Ways to Cut Your Energy Bills at No Cost to You. Hartford, CT: 1989.
 Government documents
United States. Dept. of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook.
1998-99 ed. Washington: GPO, 1998.
 Interviews
Morrison, Toni. Interview with Noah Adams. All Things Considered. Natl. Public Radio.
WNYC, New York. 16 Feb. 1987.
Roberts, Steve. Personal Interview. 7 May 2003.
Woods, Tiger. Telephone Interview. 8 June 2003.
Examples of Works Cited - Nonprint Sources
 Film
It’s A Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,
and Thomas Mitchell. RKO, 1946.
 Videocassette, DVD and Laser Disc
It’s A Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,
and Thomas Mitchell. 1946. DVD. Republic, 1998.
Cite a videocassette, DVD or laser disc like a film, but include the original release date and the
medium before the name of the distributor.
.............................
Sample citations above were prepared using the following source:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed. New York:
Modern Language Association, 1999.
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Examples of Works Cited - Electronic Sources
In today's computer age, students are not limited to using just books and periodicals for their
research. Computers open up a wide avenue of information access. For instance, at Somers High
you can access the Internet and online databases such as the Connecticut Digital Library
(iconn.org) and Electric Library. Information gathered from these sources has to be documented in
your research projects, as do print sources.
 How to document the Internet and online databases
The basic form to document an Internet source is:
• Name of the author (if given)
• Title of the material accessed (in quotation marks)
• Date (that you accessed the information)
• Location available (at what URL address). Enclose URLs in angle brackets (< >).
Examples:
Daniel, Ralph Thomas. "The History of Western Music." Britannica Online: Macropedia
1995 ed. 12 October 2002. <http://www.eb.com>.
"Word of the Day from Merriam Webster." 16 September 2003.
<http://www.homeworkcentral.com/files.htp?fileid=7592&use=hc>.
 How to document the Connecticut Digital Library (www.iconn.org)
Document magazine and journal articles as you would document a print source. However, note that
page numbers are not required for citing online sources.
See “Discovering Collection” articles for documentation information. The “Source Citation” is
located at the end of the article. Click on the “Tool Box” icon at the top of the page for ideas to
help you organize your research sources.
 How to document Electric Library sources
Whenever you open an Electric Library document (article, radio or TV transcript, section of a book,
photo or map), all the bibliographic information is listed in a window at the top of the document.
When you print or save it, these sources will automatically accompany it, and they can be used for
documentation. Because it is an electronic source, you must add the following to an MLA citation,
indicating the date the document was retrieved:
Electric Library (17 Apr. 2002).
If you don't find an appropriate citation format for a source you're using or if you have any other
questions, please ask for help from your English teacher or your school library media specialist.
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How to Document Your Work
with Parenthetical Documentation
You must give credit in your paper whenever you use another person's words, ideas or facts. The
works cited page, the list of works at the end of your research paper, does not, by itself, provide
enough detailed and precise documentation. You must indicate exactly what you have derived from
each source and exactly where in that work you found the material. Today the most accepted,
recommended and practical form of giving credit to your sources is parenthetical documentation —
inserting brief parenthetical acknowledgments in your paper wherever you incorporate another's
words, facts or ideas. These brief parenthetical citations in the text refer the reader to a works cited
page at the end of the paper.
Guidelines for Parenthetical Documentation:
 The standard parenthetical documentation includes an author's last name and page numbers.
Example: Emily Dickinson firmly believed that we cannot fully comprehend life unless we also
understand death (Martin 625).
 If you use the author's name to introduce the material cited, use only the page numbers in the
parentheses.
Example: As Wendy Martin has suggested, Emily Dickinson firmly believed that we cannot
fully comprehemd life unless we also understand death (625).
 If you are citing more than one work by the same author, give the author's name and a short
title before the page numbers.
Example: Modern dream researchers now accept the principle that dreams express "profound
aspects of personality" (Foulkes, Sleep 184). But investigation has shown that young
children's dreams are in general rather simple and unemotional (Foulkes, "Dreams" 78).
 If the next citation is from the same book as the one directly before, you skip the author's name
and just cite the page number in parentheses.
Example: Medieval Europe was a place of both "raids, pillages, slavery and extortion" and of
"merchants, monetary exchange, towns, and active markets" (Townsend 10). It was an exciting
era, as well as a sinister one. Indeed, "Europe during the 900's was plagued with war, disease,
and famine" (23).
 If the work is listed by title, use the title, or a shortened version.
Example: (New York Times Atlas 39)
 If you wish to include two or more works in a single parenthetical reference, cite each work as
you normally would, and use semicolons to separate the citations.
Example: (Martin 625; Bray 21-28).
If you don't find an appropriate citation format for a source you're using or if you have any other
questions, please ask for help from your English teacher or school library media specialist.
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Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas without giving proper credit—or without giving
any credit at all—to the writer of the original. Whether plagiarism is intentional or unintentional, it
is a serious offense. Plagiarism carries severe penalties at Somers High School, ranging from zero
on a paper or project to suspension from school. By using Somers High School's Guide to
Documentation, you will avoid these penalties. Let's look at an example of the most common form
of plagiarism so you will know how to avoid it. The following examples are taken from Trimmer's
A Guide to MLA Documentation.
Examples of Plagiarism
The following excerpt is from Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore, an account of the founding of
Australia. The examples of how students tried to use this excerpt illustrate the problem of
plagiarism.
 Original Version
Transportation did not stop crime in England or even slow it down. The "criminal class" was
not eliminated by transportation, and could not be, because transportation did not deal with the
causes of crime.
 Version A
Transportation did not stop crime in England or even slow it down. Criminals were not
eliminated by transportation because transportation did not deal with the causes of crime.
Version A is plagiarism. Because the writer of version A does not indicate in the text or in a
parenthetical reference that the words and ideas belong to Hughes, her readers will believe the
words are hers. She has stolen the words and ideas and has attempted to cover the theft by
changing or omitting an occasional word.
 Version B
Robert Hughes points out that transportation did not stop crime in England or even slow it
down. The criminal class was not eliminated by transportation, and could not be, because
transportation did not deal with the causes of crime (168).
Version B is also plagiarism, even though the writer acknowledges his source and documents the
passage with a parenthetical reference. He has worked from careless notes and has misunderstood
the difference between quoting and paraphrasing. He has copied the original word for word yet has
supplied no quotation marks to indicate the extent of the borrowing. As written and documented,
the passage masquerades as a paraphrase when in fact it is a direct quotation.
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 Version C
Hughes argues that transporting criminals from England to Australia "did not stop crime....The
'criminal class' was not eliminated by transportation, and could not be, because transportation did
not deal with the causes of crime" (168).
Version C is one satisfactory way of handling this source material. The writer has identified her
source at the beginning of the sentence, letting readers know who is being quoted. She then
explains the concept of transportation in her own words, placing within quotation marks the parts of
the original she wants to quote and using ellipsis points to delete the parts she wants to omit. She
provides a parenthetical reference to the page number in the source listed in Works Cited.
Works Cited
Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore. New York: Knopf, 1987.
Rules for Avoiding Plagiarism
The rules for avoiding plagiarism are easy to follow, but if they are not used, you can get into a lot
of trouble. It is to your advantage to learn the rules and abide by them. Then you do not have to
worry about committing the crime of stealing another person's words.
The following guidelines can help you avoid plagiarism problems:
 Always put quotation marks around any direct statement from someone else's work.
 Give credit to the author for any paraphrase of his or her ideas or statements, even though
quotation marks are not used, because these ideas are clearly not your own.
 Document any material, ideas, or thoughts you found in a specific source if it is evident that
they came from your reading and are not common knowledge.
 Do not document material that is common knowledge. This refers to biographical material such
as birthplace, date of birth/death, and other general knowledge. The statement "Skin cancer is
caused by too much exposure to the rays of the sun" is an example of information that is
common knowledge.
 Document any summary—even if it is in your own words—of a discussion from one of your
sources.
 Document any charts, graphs, or tables that are created by others or that you make with
someone else's information. Put the documentation immediately below the title of the chart,
graph, or table.
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Abbreviations for MLA Documentation
Selected Publishers
When the publisher’s name includes the name of one person (Harry N. Abrams, Inc.), cite the
surname alone (Abrams). When the publisher’s name includes the name of more than one person
(Harcourt Brace), cite only the first of these names (Harcourt).
Abrams
Allyn
Appleton
Basic
Bowker
Dodd
Doubleday
Farrar
Feminist
Harcourt
Harper
Harvard UP
Holt
Houghton
Knopf
Lippincott
MIT P
MLA
Norton
Oxford UP
Princeton UP
Rand
Random
St. Martin’s
Scribner’s
Simon
Viking
Yale UP
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Allyn and Bacon, Inc.
Appleton-Century-Crofts
Basic Books
R. R. Bowker Co.
Dodd, Mead, and Co.
Doubleday and Co., Inc.
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc.
The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Harcourt Brace
HarperCollins
Harvard University Press
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
J. B. Lippincott Co.
The MIT Press
The Modern Language Association of America
W. W. Norton and Co., Inc.
Oxford University Press
Princeton University Press
Rand McNally and Co.
Random House, Inc.
St. Martin’s Press, Inc.
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The Viking Press, Inc.
Yale University Press
Selected Reference Resources
BM
Cong. Rec.
DAB
ERIC
GPO
LC
NPR
PBS
British Museum, London (now British Library)
Congressional Record
Dictionary of American Biography
Educational Resources Information Center
Government Printing Office, Washington D. C.
Library of Congress
National Public Radio
Public Broadcasting System
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Works Cited
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 5th ed. New York: Modern
Language Association, 1999.
- - -. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern
Language Association, 2003.
Meriwether, Nell W. 12 Easy Steps to Successful Research Papers. Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC
Publishing Group, 1997.
Trimmer, Joseph F. A Guide to MLA Documentation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Additional information may be found on the Somers Public Schools web site under Library
Links: “Links to Copyright and Fair Use, Citing Sources and Plagiarism” compiled by
Betsy Kenneson.
Acknowledgments
This booklet has been compiled by the faculty members of Somers High School for their students.
An Ad Hoc Committee on Documentation began the work in 1992. The faculty members of that
first committee were June Bray, Don Gaston, Byron Kopel, Tom Malone, Mike Mayo, Gerry
Perreault and Anne Warner. Using MLA models, the ad hoc committee produced “Bibliography”
and “Parenthetical Documentation” guides and wrote a statement on academic honesty for
publication in the SHS handbook.
As electronic and online sources became more available, and because of changes in the field of
documentation, it became necessary to change and to update the work of the 1992 committee.
During 1997, Dave Tanner suggested that we expand our work and publish the updated
documentation formats in a booklet. Another ad hoc committee was formed; its members were
June Bray, Sue Kosinski, Jan Martin, Gerry Perreault and Dave Tanner. The booklet began to take
shape.
During the summer of 1999, June Bray and Jan Martin consolidated the work that had been done
and revised it to conform to the most current MLA models. The result was the booklet, Guide to
Documentation (October 1999).
During the summer of 2003, June Bray, Jan Martin and Peter Stone revised and updated the
October 1999 version. The result is this edition of the Guide to Documentation.
We appreciate the generous permission of Houghton Mifflin Company to reproduce pages from A
Guide to MLA Documentation by Joseph F. Trimmer, Fifth Edition.
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