Most people have heard of bibliographies because they’ve gone to college and/or high school and had to deal with them. However, if this is your first time writing a term paper and doing a bibliography, you probably have questions, especially if you are required to use the MLA format. Bibliographies are a little different than Works Cited pages though the formatting is the same. Whichever style is preferred by your teacher, you will use that style throughout the paper. When you’re finished, you will create a page that lists all the sources you used throughout your research. The difference is that bibliographies will include any information you read, whether or not you used the information directly in the paper.
More About Modern Language Association Style
Now that you understand the differences between Works Cited and bibliographies, you can concentrate on the style of writing. With the Modern Language Association style, you get a set of rules that must be followed for formatting. These are considered standardized reference formats and the MLA format is the preferred style for the humanities and literary research.
This method, compared with APA, focuses more on anthologies, books, audio-visual materials, literary works, and multimedia, as well as other works with many details. It will also use the present tense instead of the past tense during the writing process.
Other Standards
The Modern Language Association style usually uses a bibliographic list for the Works Cited page, meaning that all information you read as research will be included, even if you don’t directly quote the information in the paper. However, some teachers will allow you to cite only those works you used directly.
Titles should be centered an inch from the top of your page, and in-text citations will come in parentheses, with the page number and author’s last name included. An example of this: (Smith, p. 7).
Bibliographies will be in alphabetical order, with the author’s last name first, unless the author is unknown, and then you’ll start with the title of the work. If you have the same author for more than one work, the listings will be alphabetical by the last name and then by the title.
In most cases, you’ll be required to reference the authors by their last name, first name and then the middle initial, though some professors will ask that you only include the full last name and the first initial of the first name.
Writing a bibliography in MLA format can be time-consuming and tiresome, but there is help. Visit WorksCited 4u today to learn more about generating them for free.
