Scholarly Practices in the Classroom
This semester, I am teaching a course in which we are test-driving the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook and working to shift from a… Read More
Posts related to HB8 Headnote
Teaching Citation Rhetorically
As a librarian, I work with students who are worried about citing their sources. They commonly perceive citation formats as a set of complex and… Read More
Are notes compatible with MLA style?
Yes. Two kinds of notes are suitable with the parenthetical citations used in MLA style: content notes and bibliographic notes. These may be styled either… Read More
Must quotations always be introduced with wording like “So-and-so writes”?
No. There are innumerable ways to weave a quotation gracefully into your prose. As long as the quotation’s purpose and source are clear, you need… Read More
What kind of number do I put in the parenthetical citation for a poem—a page number, a line number, or another part number?
The ultimate goal is to be concise and to cite what is most useful to the reader. For quotations from a poem in a print… Read More
News articles are sometimes credited to agencies like Reuters and the Associated Press. Should the agencies be cited as the authors of these articles?
No. News agencies distribute stories from a vast pool of journalists. The name of an agency is not a meaningful indicator of authorship. Moreover, local… Read More
Is it wrong to type spaces before and after a dash?
The appropriateness of spaces before and after a dash depends on various considerations: the typeface used, the medium (print, online), and so on. In the… Read More
Is it ever appropriate to use see or see also in a parenthetical citation?
The purpose of every parenthetical citation is to tell the reader to see a work, so the word see would almost always be redundant. See… Read More
The rules for positioning a parenthetical citation next to a final period seem different with run-in quotations and block quotations. What is the logic here?
Run-in quotations and block quotations follow the same logic, although the differences in their formats call for differences in punctuation. First, let’s look at a… Read More
Why does the MLA require the use of Times New Roman? It’s a boring font.
We don’t require the use of Times New Roman or any other font. Our guidelines on formatting papers give this recommendation: “choose an easily readable… Read More