Yes. Student writers should place the titles of individual tales in quotation marks. This follows from the MLA Handbook’s general guideline for the styling of titles: “A title is placed in quotation marks if the source is part of a larger work” (25): “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” appears in The Canterbury Tales. The only tales . . .
Published 2 January 2019
Yes. When a speaker’s words in dialogue extend to more than one paragraph, use an opening quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph. Use a closing quotation mark, however, only at the end of the person’s speech, not at the end of every paragraph.
Published 28 December 2018
How you punctuate an e-mail or other greeting depends on the level of formality and the structure of the message. In a formal message, one that does not begin with a direct address, you would likely write: Dear Anne, But the greeting “Hi” is a form of direct address, which by convention is set off . . .
Published 18 December 2018
In some types of material, a vertical list may be preferable to a run-in list
Published 7 December 2018
If you provide full bibliographic details in a caption, convert the periods normally used after the elements of a works-cited-list entry into semicolons: Fig. 1. Vincent van Gogh; The Olive Trees; 1889; Museum of Modern Art, 2001; postcard. Otherwise, use commas: Fig. 5. Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, Wichita Art Museum.
Published 6 December 2018
In most cases, you need not use a comma before too at the end of a sentence or commas around it midsentence: She likes chocolate chip cookies too. She too likes chocolate chip cookies. But, as usage experts note, you must use commas when too separates the verb from its object (Cook 126): I note, too, that . . .
Published 20 November 2018
To eliminate back-to-back parentheses in a sentence, you should generally reword: Original: The General Franco Institute published the most important Spanish colonial work on Andalusi music, Patrocinio García Barriuso’s La música hispano-musulmana en Marruecos (“Hispano-Muslim Music in Morocco”) (1941). Revised: In 1941, the General Franco Institute published the most important Spanish colonial work on Andalusi music, . . .
Published 31 October 2018
The slash is rarely necessary in formal prose. It mainly appears when two terms are paired as opposites or alternatives and used together as a noun: The writer discussed how fundamental oppositions like good/evil or East/West affect the way cultures view historical events. When two terms paired as opposites precede and modify a noun, use . . .
Published 29 October 2018
In MLA style, a comma is generally only used before et al. in the “Author” slot of works-cited-list entries when the author’s first and last names are reversed: Burdick, Anne, et al. Digital_Humanities. MIT P, 2012. The comma tells your reader that the name Anne is out of normal position and that the abbreviation attaches to . . .
Published 11 September 2018
No. In MLA style, italics in a quotation are assumed to be in the original unless otherwise indicated. See the MLA Handbook for more details on quoting sources exactly (75) and on italics added for emphasis (86). Work Cited MLA Handbook. 8th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2016.
Published 28 August 2018
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