Finding appropriate sources
You have your assignment - now what? First of all, congratulations! You've been given the opportunity to learn and be creative. However, now you need to find appropriate academic sources for your paper, and that search is going to start on the web.
Wikipedia
While using Wikipedia as a source in your paper tells your instructor "I didn't try, and I don't care," specific topics are backed up with cited research, and the citations are referenced at the bottom of the Wikipedia webpage. For example, a broad topic like
"book censorship in the US" has 111(!) articles cited on Wikipedia, and these articles are literally a click away from being incorporated into your paper. Even a narrow topic like the "Three Witches" (characters in Shakespeare's Macbeth) has 33 cited articles. The earlier 8th edition of the MLA Handbook encouraged writers to "follow up on the sources that Wikipedia entries cite" (12), and I would agree.
Google Scholar (and just plain old Google)
Google Scholar (scholar. google.com) is an even broader database than Wikipedia.
Google Scholar (and just plain old Google.com) also contains links to websites, full-text PDFs of academic articles, and other sources that provide the most up-to-date information for a particular topic. To use the previous examples again, "book censorship in the US" has 409,000 results in Google Scholar, and "Three Witches in Macbeth" has 31,400.
That's a lot of information to sort through!
MLA database - MLA International Bibliography
If you are a college student (or if your school is affiliated with a university library), you will also have access to the MLA International Bibliography, which is an enormous online database for journals in the fields of language and literature. A problem with both Wikipedia and Google Scholar is that they often link to just a summary or abstract of an article. The MLA International Bibliography solves the access problem as it provides full-text access to over 1,000 journals, everything from Applied Linguistics to Renaissance Quarterly. If you require access to a journal article, you'll find it here!
Data mining from articles and books
The truth is that someone with a Ph.D. has already done your source search for you - the people who write articles and books. Authors of academic works cite the sources that are relevant to their topic, and these are easily found in the "works cited" section of a paper or book. This method is a gift that keeps on giving because it creates a positive feedback loop of published academics doing your work for you. It frees you from having to determine whether an article is "important" or not, and it provides a wide range of relevant articles to choose from. Your instructor will know what academic work is important, and by using this method to find articles, you won't be blindsided by them asking "Why didn't you use the most famous article on this topic in your paper?!"
The bottom line
I believe that incorporating all of the above methods is the best and most exhaustive way of finding appropriate sources for your paper. Even the previous edition of the MLA Handbook said that "Google and Wikipedia are reasonable places to begin your research" (12). My advice is to use Wikipedia to help clarify a topic that is interesting to you, then find more relevant articles using the full-text feature available through Google Scholar and if you have access to it, the MLA database. Next, use the articles you found to see what foundational work they cite. Then find those articles. In this way, all of your bases are covered - you'll have a variety of sources, from the foundational work to the most recent research on your topic.
Writing your paper
Now that you have collected and read all of your sources, you are ready to start writing! Academic papers tend to be very "dry" and to the point - just the facts - with little need to entertain the reader. MLA papers can seem "formulaic" and that is appropriate, because you are essentially writing according to a formula, with rules that are expected to be followed. The same kinds of things are expected in all academic papers - a review of the relevant literature, in-text citation of sources, the works cited page, etc. Departing from the formula does not make you creative so much as it makes you wrong. This is not to say that writing to a formula is easy. It is, however, very straightforward.
Here is a point that I cannot stress enough - write from an outline! The time it takes to write an outline is more than made up in the time it saves you when it comes time to write your paper. The outline doesn't have to be especially detailed, but should note the places you will write about different sources.
Every paper is different, but most follow a basic structure or "shape." The "shape" of the paper is like an hourglass - broad at the beginning, narrow in the middle, broad at the end. In other words, your paper should begin and end in fairly broad generalities, and discuss specific sources in the middle. This is where an outline comes in handy. It allows you to visualize how the different components - the opening, the sources, the in-text citations, quotations, and everything else - come together to form a complete paper.
In-text Citations
In-text citations get their own section because of the many problems they cause
It seems easy enough - you should use an in-text citation in your paper whenever you are paraphrasing, discussing someone else's ideas, or taking a quotation from another source.
Basically, when you're writing about someone else's work, it should be clear whose work it is that you're writing about. If you're writing about your own thoughts, you don't need an in-text citation. When you start writing about someone else's, you need to give them attribution or credit. This allows the reader to then find the source in the works cited list and read it for themselves if they like
One author
An example might make things clearer, and so here is one taken from the sample paper on Macbeth included at the end of this book. The same sentence, based on information from a journal article, can be rewritten several different ways:
Jajji asserts that "Lady Macbeth is ambitious, but her ambition brooks no barriers, moral or temporal" (234).
According to critics, Lady Macbeth has an ambition that "brooks no barriers, moral or temporal" (Jaiii 234).
The idea that Lady Macbeth's ambition "brooks no barriers, moral or temporal" (Jajji
234), has been asserted by some critics.
Note: No punctuation is placed between the author's name and the page number.
Each sentence is providing the same basic information from page 234 of M.
Ayub Jajji's journal article entitled "A Feminist Reading of Shakespearean Tragedies:
Frailty, Thy Name is Woman." If the quotation took up two pages in the original work, a page span (e.g. 234-35) would be included in the citation.
While the examples involve a quotation, attribution should be provided whenever
you are paraphrasing someone else's ideas too! For example:
Lady Macbeth is a character who is unobstructed by moral barriers (Jajji 234).
Finally, you should provide an in-text citation when discussing someone else's ideas. For example:
Ambition is at the core of Lady Macbeth's personality, and M. Ayub Jaji believes that she will stop at nothing to achieve her goals (234).
As you can see, the same basic idea (Lady Macbeth is ambitious can be expressed through a number of different sentences. The same information can be presented via a quotation, or through paraphrasing, or even by discussing someone else's idea, but in each case, the original source is given attribution through an in-text citation.
Here is the citation of the article as it would appear on the works cited page:
Jajji, M. Ayub. "A Feminist Reading of Shakespearean Tragedies: Frailty, Thy Name is
Woman." Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences, vol. 8, no. 1, 2014, pp. 228-37.
Two authors
But what if a citation has two authors? In that case, BOTH are included in the in-text citation! Here's an example from a paper on the efficacy of napping:
Tietzel, Amber J., and Leon C. Lack. "The Recuperative Value of Brief and Ultra-Brief Naps on Alertness and Cognitive Performance." Journal of Sleep Research, vol. 11, no. 3, 2002, pp. 213-18, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2002.00299.x.
Sleep researchers Amber Tietzel and Leon Lack found that even a short nap (10 minutes) resulted in improved alertness (216).
Sleep researchers have found that even a short nap (10 minutes) resulted in improved alertness (Tietzel and Lack 216).
Sleep researchers have found that even a short nap (10 minutes) resulted in "significantly improved alertness and cognitive performance" (Tietzel and Lack 216).
Three or more authors
Citation is just as easy when there are three or more authors. Just list the first author and "et al." (meaning "and others"). For example:
Akehurst, Lucy, et al. "Effect of Socially Encountered Misinformation and Delay on
Children's Eyewitness Testimony." Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, vol. 16, no. 1, 2009, pp. 125-36, https://doi.org/10.1080/13218710802620406.
Lucy Akehurst and colleagues have found that suggestibility is higher in children when misinformation is presented in a social context (134).
Researchers have found that suggestibility is higher in children when misinformation is presented in a social context (Akehurst et al. 134).
One-page works
If a source is only one page (like an editorial, magazine, or newspaper article), then you don't have to put the page number in an in-text citation. For example:
Weinberger, Eric. "Off the Reservation." The New York Times, 15 June 2003, p. G13.
Critic Eric Weinberger points out that Alexie "works under the strain most other writers don't, as an Indian writer, or maybe an important Indian writer, or at least the important Indian writer of the moment."
Website with an author (and no page numbers)
What if you are using a source from a website? Websites don't have page numbers, and so no number should be provided in the in-text citation. Earlier editions of MLA style would include the paragraph number that the information is taken from (you would actually count the unnumbered paragraphs), but this is no longer necessary in the 9th edition. Here's an example from the Macbeth sample paper:
Like the Weird Sisters, Lady Macbeth is also portrayed as "harsh and crazy" (Donkor).
Donker, Michael. "Character Analysis: Lady Macbeth." British Library, 19 May 2017,
www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/character-lady-macbeth.
Work with no identifiable author (or page numbers)
What if you're using a source that doesn't have an identified author (or page
numbers)? In this case, use the title of the work in the citation. Here is an example, also from the Macbeth sample paper:
The Weird Sisters are the first characters introduced in the play and are also the first to foreshadow the demise of Macbeth ("Three Witches").
An in-text citation is used here because the idea expressed in the sentence is paraphrasing information taken from Wikipedia. While some teachers are fine with their students using Wikipedia as a source in a paper, others are not, so be sure to ask whether it is acceptable before you start writing your paper!
You Tube, TED Talk, video lecture, or podcast
What if you're using a source from a video lecture or podcast? In this case, the in-text citation would include a time stamp - the hour, minute, and second (or seconds) of the source that you are using in your paper. Again, let's return to the Macbeth sample paper, which includes an in-text citation of a YouTube video.
However, in Shakespearean literature, an essential element is the female persona as being predominantly viewed in a "negative, helpless, or evil way" (Solomon 00:01:33-38).
This sentence is quoting information that was presented between minute 1:33-1:38 in a YouTube video entitled "Feminist Analysis of Macbeth" created by Bersabbe Solomon.
Lines from a play (or poem)
of lines from a play:
I'll finish this section with an example of how you would write an in-text citation
As Shakespeare writes, Lady Macbeth proclaims, "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty
1 ... Come to my woman's breasts / And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers
" (Macbeth 1.5.47-55).
Those are some powerful words (I love Macheth and see it performed live every chance I get)! The in-text citation refers to the fact that the lines from the play come from Act 1, Scene 5, lines 47-55 (abbreviated down to 1.5.47-55). Roman numerals (or whatever numbering system is used in the original work) used to be acceptable, but MLA now prefers the use of Arabic numerals when providing this information.