hey everyone so this is a video on using MLA style citations um in text when you're writing a research paper I broke this video up so that if you're wanting to know how to do Intex citations watch this video and there will be another video on how to do the work cited page um but if anyone who's writing a research paper and if you're in school whether it's high school or college at some point you're going to write a research paper you're going to have to cite your sources um different instructors use different methods some
like APA um in English class it's probably most likely going to be MLA um that's what I use it's what I like it's what I'm familiar with so I'm going to show you how to do it and there's there's this is pretty confusing for a lot of people but I'm going to try and give you the basics okay let's talk briefly about plagiarism what is it plagiarism is the intentional or unintentional use of someone else's work or ideas as your own and it's it's actually pretty serious it can result in expulsion or some other type
of discipline um I think a lot of the time when people play Dr they didn't actually mean to do it they just forgot to site their Source they weren't sure how to site their Source just don't take the risk when in doubt site your Source if there's any question in your mind about whether you're using someone else's ideas um basically if it didn't come out of your own head you had to get it from somewhere wherever you got that from site The Source if you always cite your sources then you don't have to be nervous
about it okay what is the MLA it's the modern language Association and I want to give you a great resource it's called Purdue Al Purdue University and Al stands for online writing lab and here's the link and I'm going to um show you the most common sources which are books and online articles but there's a lot of different types of sources and they have to be cited differently um so if you're not doing a book or an online article I recommend you go to this website and it'll show you exactly how to do it but
for most people most of the time they're going to be using books or online articles so those are the ones I want to go over if I were to go over all the different types uh we'd be here all day so um let's just go over these two okay so with an Intex citation you've got the author's name and it must appear either in the sentence or in the parenthesis at the end and we're going to look at examples of this um and the page number will always be in the parentheses it will never be
in the sentence so let's look at I'm going to show you four quotations and they're all the same but they're all a little bit different so in this case I just pulled this out of a paper I was writing um I'm introducing the author at the beginning right so best will suggest that then I've got a comma a lot of people forget that and then I've got my quotation at the end of the quotation I've got the page number and then notice that the period goes at the very end of the par uh the sorry
the parenthesis a lot of people want to put it inside the quotation marks because it looks more correct and I understand because I kind of have that impulse also but it it's counterintuitive but it actually has to go all the way at the end try and think of it like the page number is part of your sentence maybe that will help you um but the period always goes at the end here's another example it's it's basically the same thing except for style purposes is maybe I didn't want to actually introduce the author at the beginning
of the quotation depending on how the wording is in the paragraph you're using maybe you want to just run straight into the quotation you don't want to be introducing the author at the beginning all the time because that could get a little bit clunky and I recommend that you mix up the way you do this as I'm doing here um but I still have the author's name but in this case because I didn't introduce it at the beginning it goes in the parenthesis at the end still have the page number and the period still goes
outside the quotation marks at the very end now if you don't want to use a direct quotation but you're still conveying some kind of information that you found that's basically um a paraphrase um so if the information wasn't your own you didn't know it yourself you need to cite it but it's not really a quotation it's something that you read and that you're you're putting it into your own words um but I still have the author's name and I still have the page number and notice the period is still going at the end but what's
missing as I'm sure you've noticed is there's no quotation marks because I'm not actually using the exact words that best tool used I'm using my own uh and here's another example of that it's the same thing except I didn't want to introduce the author's name at the beginning I wanted it at the end so it's going to go in the parenthesis so that that seems maybe a little bit confusing um but it's really just the same sentence four different ways and as I said before I really recommend that you mix up the way you do
this don't always um use the author at the very beginning or don't always use the author and the parenthesis try and mix it up because otherwise it can really really start to sound really redundant so um let's talk about citing the sources here's the exception um and this is basically the only exception if a phrase is common or universally known such as a proverb then no citation is needing is needed though quotation marks are still required so for example Aristotle advised like activities produce like dispositions if you're using that in your paper you don't actually
have to cite where you found it because it's a proverb or a common phrase um but it is someone else's words so you're going to use the quotation marks again when in doubt if you did look it up just cite the source um because you can get into this game where you're saying to yourself well it's pretty commonly known maybe I don't really need to cite it don't play that game because you can end up in a lot of trouble it's not worth it it's too stressful if you pulled it from something just site The
Source if you already knew it in your own head and it just came to you um but you know it with someone else you use the quotation marks but don't site the source so as I said when in doubt just side The Source okay online Source material um this is becoming more and more common um about 10 years ago it wasn't really accepted in academic papers um but now it is more so um so basically if you know the author use it if not use the name or partial name of the website as the author
as I showed you in the previous examples just use the name or partial name of the website in place of the author um you don't need to give paragraph numbers or page numbers if it's online probably aren't any don't give the few full URL in the text it's sufficient to use for example CNN.com you don't need to put HTTP colon now here's the thing MLA and 2009 actually changed the rules on this you don't have to give the URLs anymore um but a lot of instructors are probably used to it and they're probably going to
want it anyway the thing about MLA is they change a lot so check with your instructor um technically the rules say you don't have to do that anymore more but so many people have done it for so long that it you you might have some explain to do if you don't do it so just check with your instructor on that um legitimate online sources scholarly articles will be easy to reference because the author will be clearly indicated if you're having trouble finding the source info it's probably not a good source to be using for academics
so if you've got some kind of article that you found online and you can't really figure out who the author is um probably use it then anything that's a legitimate scholarly Source it's going to be very clear who the author is because they want credit for their work um so if you're having trouble finding it I would say just don't use it okay let's talk about two style points um this is for Intex citations if the quotation is four lines of Pros or less or three if it's verse use the format that I just showed
you where you um have the quotation and you have the parenthesis and you have the page number um if it's longer you need to indent you remove the quotation marks and you place the punctuation before the parenthetical science uh citation so um as you see here for example if in your paper you had the sentence in this sense that is a sacrifice not the Epiphany that defines the tragic that blue line would basically be the U margin of your paper and that's the margin that's set by your word processor what you're going to have to
do is you take that chunk um of a quotation that you want to use and you have to indent the whole thing so that it lines up and B just use your t key um and notice the quotation marks are gone um and that's because by indenting it I'm indicating that it is a quotation um and you've still got the period but notice now it's moved now it's on the other side of the parentheses so this is where it gets a little hairy um if it's just one line it's going to be quotation marks and
the period is going to go on the outside of the parenthesis if it's a block quote like this it's called block quoting it's going to be indented which is going to indicate that it is a quote so you don't need quotation marks and the period goes on the other side this like I said this stuff is confusing just um use the website I showed you Purdue Al that will help you if you forget but the more you do this it almost becomes second nature and you don't really have to think about it that much um
okay if you add a word or words in a quotation you should put brackets around the words to indicate that they're not part of the original text so if you are introducing something into the quotation um that maybe was clear in the text but because you've taken a chunk out of the text you've lifted it and you're putting it in your paper it's maybe not clear what the author was referring to or you want to just add some kind of clarification of your own use brackets so um the quotation actually from the book was like
Hil um like and then I can't actually I can't remember it was but it wasn't specifically G Chaser and languin um best referred to somebody and then he said like you know probably um medieval authors Hilton is a practitioner of the vernacular well I didn't feel like that was clear enough but I knew what he was talking about because i' read the article so I introduced um more specific information so you always want to put it in Brackets but otherwise the rules don't change about where the periods go and where the uh quotations go that's
Basics that sorry that's the basics um like I said there's a ton of different ways to do it check out that website um it will really help you um but I hope that that at least gives you enough to move forward um when I write paper I almost always have some kind of handbook next to me because nobody can remember this stuff it's really complicated but um you have to follow the rules if you don't follow the rules your paper's going to get rejected so anyway thumbs up if you found that helpful and if you're
wondering how to do a work cited page I have another video on that um which is basically part two of this so thanks a lot
