The current standard for MLA is published in the following manual:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 2003.
Copies of this manual are available in any college bookstore or library.
What's new with the sixth edition?
The main change between the fifth edition and the sixth is an overall streamlining to vastly simplify the process of citing sources in both paper and electronic format. In the fifth edition, all citations consisted of author, title, and publishing information. The title field could have quoted and underlined portions or even unquoted plain text labels. The publishing field had over a hundred variations as well. All in all, citation was quite a challenge. In the new sixth edition, the publishing information field has been divided into three new fields, one for paper publishing, one for electronic publishing, and one for Internet access information. In addition, the portion of the former title field that was italicized or underlined has been moved to the paper publication field. With these structural changes, the citation process has become much simpler and easier to learn and use.
What happened to the underlining we used to do?
It's still there if you prefer. On the web, underlining indicates a clickable link and for that reason, all examples on this website use italics exclusively to distinguish between hyperlinks. Italics and underlining mean exactly the same thing and can be used interchangeably. In fact, the underline was used to instruct the typesetters to use italic type when setting the type because typewriters could not change fonts easily. Of course, if you are handwriting a citation, you must use the underline since it is not practical to italicize handwriting.
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The material presented here is not designed to simply parrot the printed style guide, rather, it attempts to demonstrate a logical strategy that can easily be learned and applied. As such, it is presented differently than other resources. This method of presentation is similar to how our Writing Center tutors present the method. We hope that you will find it useful. |
—By Douglas E. Greathouse, M.A.
