Build Your Own Works Cited Entries
General format for all Works Cited entries:
Author. “Title of Smaller Work.” Title of Larger Work. Publication Information: Date: Page
Numbers. Format of Source.
General format for entries of online sources:
Author (if there is one). “Title of Webpage, Article, Video, or Whatever.” Title of Website.
Organization that Runs the Website (if you can find it). Date it was Posted or Last Updated.
Web (or Online). Date You Accessed the Source. <URL>.
***URL is not usually included.
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Author
one author
Last Name of First Author Listed, First Name of First Author Listed.
two authors
Last Name of First Author Listed, First Name of First Author Listed, and First Name of Second Author
Listed Last Name of Second Author Listed.
three authors
Last Name of First Author Listed, First Name of First Author Listed, First Name of Second Author
Listed Last Name of Second Author Listed, and First Name of Third Author Listed Last Name
of Third Author Listed
four or more authors
Last Name of First Author Listed, First Name of First Author Listed, et al.
General Rules for the Author Section:
• put middle initials after the first name
• put titles (Jr., PhD, etc.) at the very end of that author’s portion
• if the author was really just an editor (it will say so on the cover), put ,ed. after the very end of
that author’s portion.
• If you’re citing an interview, the person who was interviewed is the author, NOT the person
asking all the questions.
• If the author is an organization instead of a person, put down the name of that organization –
don’t change the order of any of the words.
Examples of “reversing” names with sufffixes:
John D. Rockefeller IV

Rockefeller, John D., IV.
Arthur George Rust, Jr.

Rust, Arthur George, Jr.
No author is listed for:
• films or documentaries
• television episodes
• DVD featurettes (DVD commentary and interviews do have authors!)
• any source with no author listed (look for it first)
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Title
On the Works Cited page, titles must be capitalized correctly. If the source is a smaller work that is
part of a larger work, list the smaller work first.
Capitalizing Titles Correctly:
Always capitalize the first word and the last word
Capitalize key words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns)
Don’t capitalize a, an, the, conjunctions or prepositions
Conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so
Prepositions: of, in, out, to, by, with, on, off, (there are about 100)
*** Newspapers, magazines and most online sources follow different rules. Titles in your paper and
Works Cited page must follow the rules listed here regardless of how titles appear in your source. ***
Fiddler on the Roof (two-act musical play)
The New York Times (newspaper)
Starry Night (painting)
Of Mice and Men (film and novel)
Title of the small work is capitalized as titles should be (see above) and should be in quotation marks.
Small works include:
• articles in newspapers and magazines
• essays
• short films and DVD featurettes
• short stories, one-act plays, songs, and most poems
• episodes of TV shows
• a webpage that is part of a website
• any source that is part of a larger work with its own title (which would be in italics)
Title of the long work is capitalized as titles should be (see above) and must be in italics (or underlined
if handwritten). Large works include:
• works that stand alone
o novels, books, feature films (longer than 60 minutes)
o plays of two or more acts, long (epic) poems, works of art
• collections of smaller works
o newspapers and magazines
o anthologies of stories, poems or essays
o TV series and music albums
o websites (the part of the web address that ends in .com, .org, edu, or whatever)
Title Examples
“Style” (essay)
“The Monkey’s Paw” (short story)
La Guernica (painting by Picasso)
Twelve Angry Men (play)
To Kill a Mockingbird (novel)
[shorter works that are included in larger works]
“Jack-Jack Attack” (short film)
on
The Incredibles (film on DVD)
“Treehouse of Horrors” (episode)
of
The Simpsons (TV series)
“Come Together” (song)
on
Abbey Road (music album)
“Congress and the Deficit” (article) in
Newsweek (magazine)
“Fire and Ice” (poem)
in
The Poems of Robert Frost (anthology of poetry)
“Follow the White Rabbit” (featurette) on The Matrix (film on DVD)
“How to Ace the Research Paper” (webpage) on Shanleyworld.com (website)
***Title of a film or book review
Review of…
Title of film does NOT equal title of review
__________________________________________________________________________________
Publication/Release/Date Information
This can be complicated for different types of sources found online, such as transcripts, streaming
video, interviews, etc. Try to find the most recent date you can, but there won’t always be one.
For books, if there are too many publishers mentioned, use the one on the title page, or the one on the
book’s spine. For the city, use the first city listed or the city that’s in the United States.
For books, always use the most recent year on the publication info page—unless it’s classic literature,
in which case you should use the first year and the last year given.
For DVDs, use the production/distribution company that’s listed on the spine of the DVD case. Or,
use the one that shows up first at the very beginning of the movie.
For films, DVD/Blu-Ray commentary and featurettes, list the year the film was released in theaters; if
you’re not sure, check IMDb.com. You’ll also need the year that the copy of the film you’re
using was released on DVD/Blu-Ray; if you’re not sure, go to Amazon.com and find the
edition of the film you have – scroll down and find the date it was released for sale.
For websites, try to find what organization operates the website; this information is often unavailable.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Page Numbers
Only for magazine and newspaper articles and for any short work on paper that is part of a collection.
If you’re listing an entire book as a source, do not list page numbers on the Works Cited page. If the
source you used was not made of paper (including magazine and newspaper articles you found online),
do not list page numbers here.
Do not use a p. or pg. in this section. Page numbers are the only numbers that should be in this section,
so they don’t need to be labeled.
• for a single page number  12.
• for a span of page numbers  12-14.
• for an interrupted span of page numbers  12+. (The reader will at least know where to start.)
__________________________________________________________________________________
Format of Source
Choose the word from this list that best describes the source as you used it:
• Print
• Web (or Online)
• DVD
• VHS
• Blu-Ray
• Personal Interview
• Address or Lecture
• Pamphlet
• Film (if you actually saw the film in a theater)
For these, list the type of source before the date
• Personal Interview (or Online Interview, or Telephone Interview)
• Pamphlet
• others?
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Why does citation format matter?
If you follow a system it’s less confusing for the reader (in this case, the teacher who’s grading you)
and it’s easier for you because you don’t have to think as much.
Does a period or comma go inside or outside the quotation marks? What about question marks,
exclamation points, or semicolons?
If a period or a comma comes at the end of something in quotation marks, no matter what it is, the
period or comma goes inside the quotation marks unless you’re citing immediately after it, in which
case the period or comma goes after the citation.
A question mark, an exclamation mark, semicolon or colon goes outside the quotation marks unless
it’s part of the quote itself, in which case they go inside the quotation marks. The difference is that
these marks could change the meaning of what’s in the quotation marks, but a comma or period won’t
(at least, not enough).
Which studio should I put in the Works Cited entry for a film?
Their logo will be the first thing you'll see when you watch the film, usually accompanied with a
familiar melody, and most likely it's one of these:
• Paramount
• Universal
• Columbia/Tristar (now Sony)
• 20th Century Fox
• Warner Brothers
• Disney
It might possibly be
• MGM
• United Artists
• MGM/UA
• DreamWorks (or DreamWorks Animation)
• New Line
• Miramax
• Weinstein
• RKO (went out of business in the 1940s)
• Orion (went out of business around 1990)
• Touchstone or Hollywood Pictures (both owned by Disney)
• Pixar [Pixar was never a distributing studio, but they’re so well known that putting down
“Disney,” which has distributed all Pixar films, is confusing.)
When in doubt, use the logo found on the spine of the DVD/Blu-Ray/VHS case.
For more information on the major studios, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_studios (yes,
a page on Wikipedia).
-----------------------Fun Trivia!
Most of the major distributing studios are each affiliated with a broadcast television network:
Columbia – CBS (stands for Columbia Broadcasting System)
Universal – NBC
Disney – ABC
20th Century Fox – Fox
Warner Brothers – the WB (now the CW)
Paramount – UPN (now the CW)
Universal bought NBC and Disney bought ABC fairly recently; the other networks were actually
started by the studios themselves (or the companies that also owned the studios).