Writing your research paper, you may have encountered citations that may vary with regards to the kind of research paper you are writing about. Your professors or even you may have been told or noticed that when you are citing an author or a book that goes well with your research topic, you have to cite it properly or else it may not be recorded as such. Which will also lead you to plagiarism. We are told to cite our sources when doing our research so as to not get plagiarized. When you cite your sources, always remember that there are two kinds of citations, the MLA Citation and the APA citation. Each of these citations have different formatting so be careful. To be able to know more about which citation format to use, check out these MLA citation examples now.
To start, MLA stands for Modern Language Association. When you are making your academic research papers, you are often told to do the MLA citations. An MLA citation format is a kind of citation format that academic researchers, teachers and students who are told to write research papers use in order to cite out their sources for their research paper. In addition to that, you use the MLA citation when your research paper follows the MLA format, and the purpose of an MLA citation is to make sure that as you write your research paper you are acknowledging the sources used to make your research paper even more authentic. Lastly, the format for an MLA citation is chronological order. The author, the title of your sources, the version, numbers and of course the date of publication and it was published.
Making an MLA citation is easy enough if you have all the correct information in order. As well as if you have all the elements of what makes an MLA citation. It is important that you will know what begins and what ends, how you make it and what should be avoided when using this kind of citation format. With that being said, the following steps provided will help you make your MLA citation.
Citing out your sources, you must write them in chronological order. This will mean that regardless of their first names beginning with what part of the alphabet, what matters most is the author’s last name and first name next. Since you are using the MLA citation, the MLA citation format requires you to write it in chronological order, this will also matter as to when their books, articles or even academic papers were being written. Follow that order.
Another thing you can take notice of when using the MLA citing style is that, The author’s last name is written first and followed by the first name. As well as the fact that the title of the research paper or article they have written follows after their names. It is different from the APA format, which follows a different citing style. For the APA it is the author’s name followed by the date.
MLA citations when adding the title after the author’s name, you must add the open and close quotations. This is to specify that the word next to the author’s name is their works. The title of their works that you have used in your research paper or your thesis paper. Not quoting the title may make your citations not be an MLA format but something different.
After the title of the works, books or articles, the last thing you can add is the date of publishing and the place it was published. The date of publishing is important as you must arrange the entire citation in chronological order, this will mean the latest one is on top while the oldest will be at the bottom.
The acronym MLA stands for Modern Language Association. This is just one of the many kinds of formats that are used in research papers, thesis, and academic papers.
When you are writing your research paper or your thesis, in order to avoid any copyright or plagiarism, it is always best to cite the sources you took to support your idea.
When you are citing your sources, the difference between MLA and APA is in MLA the author’s name comes first followed by the title of the source, the version of the source, the date and the location of publishing. As for the APA, the author’s name is followed by the date, and then the title of the book or the resources.
Since there are a lot of citing formats and kinds, it is always best to be fully aware which one to be using. Since there is the MLA format, Chicago format and the APA format just to name a few examples.