Ready, Set, Cite (MLA 9th)

Why Cite Your Sources?

When you write a research essay, you use information and facts from a variety of resources to support your own ideas and to help you develop new ones. Books, articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, and web sites are some examples of sources you might use. Citing these sources of information in your work is essential because:

• It gives credit to the authors whose work you use to develop and support your ideas
• It allows your audience to identify and find this work in order to learn more about your topic
• It gives your paper more credibility because it shows you're supporting your arguments with evidence

Accuracy & Precision Matter

MLA style (any citation style, in fact) presents researchers with a set of strict rules....not vague guidelines.  Accuracy and precision are vital to the citation process. Always check your work carefully to ensure you've followed all conventions, including font styles, capitalization, punctuation, alphabetization, and format concerns.

Where Formatting Matters

Different professors may ask you to use different citation styles—MLA, APA, Turabian, Chicago, —but no matter which one you’re working with, every style controls the same three areas of your paper:

1. General Format – How the paper looks on the page (margins, spacing, headers, titles).

2. Bibliography – How you present the full list of sources you used.

3. In-Text Citations – How you credit sources within the body of your paper.

Once you understand these three areas, shifting from one citation style to another is mostly about learning the specific rules of that style—not starting over from scratch.