ENG 100 Prof. Shamecca Harris Fall 2023

When you find items in OneSearch, you can click on the citation tool above the short description:

a

Clicking on the tool will open a box in which you can choose your citation style and then copy the citation:

Note: Always double-check the citations generated through automatic tools, which can make errors. The Excelsior College OWL is a good, free site where you can check the full set of rules.

A citation tells your reader some basic information about the document you're discussing. It should include:

• the name of the author who wrote it;
• the title;
• if it's a small thing in a bigger thing--like an article in a newspaper, or a chapter in a book--the title of the bigger thing, and the page numbers that belong to the smaller thing's part of it;
• the date it was published; and
• depending on the kind of thing it is, you may also have to include the name of the company that published it, or the address to find it online.

Citations of any "style" all include this information, but the order and punctuation might vary a bit. MLA is usually the style used by people writing about literature, so most college English classes use MLA style.

Whenever there is no "cite" button to click, you can write your own citation. 

The basic order in MLA is:

Last name of author, First name. "Title of document." Title of Larger Publication if There Is One, Date Month Year, URL.

If your article is part of a periodical (for example, a journal or magazine), you should also include the volume and issue number.

For more info on citation, please see our MLA citation guide!