AAS384|HIST384 Slavery in US History & Culture

The Emory Writing Center offers personalized one-to-one support for writing assignments. You can book sessions with tutors by appointment or drop-in during walk-in hours.

Citing material -- by including it in a bibliography and by using in text citations -- allows readers to know whose ideas you are using. This gives the original authors credit, and it forms the basis of your own authority as a writer.

The role of a citation is for your reader to be able to see easily where your evidence comes from, and to track down and read or view those materials themselves:

• who is to from? (author name),
• when is it from? (date),
• where is it from? (publication, publisher)

Citation styles are based on disciplines and are a central feature of the scholarly conversation. Part of forming your own authority as a writer is using the citation style correctly -- including things like correct punctuation.

How do I cite sources in MLA format?

MLA format is commonly used in the humanities. It involves the use of parenthetical in-text citations, which means that the citation information is within parentheses beside the quoted or paraphrased information. You can get help with MLA from the following:

• The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers a useful and comprehensive guide to citing different types of sources in MLA format.
• The MLA Handbook 2016 in the Robert W. Woodruff Library under this call number: LB2369 .G53 2016
• You can copy and paste a reference cited in MLA style directly from many of the library databases and from Google Scholar (to cite from Google Scholar, click on the quotation mark underneath the reference).
• You can also use a citation manager software, like Zotero or EndNote.