What if a source has no author

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto. In such cases, give the page number of your edition making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume vol. When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection , cite the author of the internal source i.

For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in Nature in , you might write something like this:.

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited. Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials in your citation.

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. JSTOR, doi Franck, Caroline, et al. If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others.

Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks. Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number s :.

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number s. If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses. In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using and underline or italicize the title , as each version varies in its translation, followed by book do not italicize or underline , chapter, and verse.

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch.

A period follows the name e. After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Pleadingly Give me a drink, Rocky. When there is no author for a web page, the title moves to the first position of the reference entry:. Example: All 33 Chile miners freed in flawless rescue. Cite in text the first few words of the reference list entry usually the title and the year.

Use double quotation marks around the title or abbreviated title. Journal or magazine article from library database or online with no author. Famine relief: Just a simple matter of supplying food? Nutrition Noteworthy , 5 1. Food safety shake-up needed in the USA. When an article e. In an MLA style Works Cited entry for a newspaper , you can cite a local newspaper in the same way as you would a national one, except that you may have to add the name of the city in square brackets to clarify what newspaper you mean, e.

The Gazette [Montreal]. Dallas Observer. If you focus on a particular contributor e. If your citation of the podcast focuses more on the contribution of someone else e. MLA recommends citing the original source wherever possible, rather than the source in which it is quoted or reproduced. For example: qtd.

If a source is reproduced in full within another source e. For example:. When you want to cite a PowerPoint or lecture notes from a lecture you viewed in person in MLA , check whether they can also be accessed online ; if so, this is the best version to cite, as it allows the reader to access the source.

If the material is not available online, use the details of where and when the presentation took place. In an MLA song citation , you need to give some sort of container to indicate how you accessed the song. If this is a physical or downloaded album, the Works Cited entry should list the album name, distributor, year, and format.

However, if you listened to the song on a streaming service, you can just list the site as a container, including a URL. In this case, including the album details is optional; you may add this information if it is relevant to your discussion or if it will help the reader access the song.

When citing a song in MLA style , the author is usually the main artist or group that released the song. However, if your discussion focuses on the contributions of a specific performer, e.

When a source has no title , this part of your MLA reference is replaced with a description of the source, in plain text no italics or quotation marks, sentence-case capitalization. In MLA Style , you should cite a specific chapter or work within a book in two situations:.

If you cite multiple chapters or works from the same book, include a separate Works Cited entry for each chapter. Use a shortened version of the title in your in-text citation.

If a source has no page numbers, you can use an alternative locator e. If there are three or more authors, name only the first author, followed by et al. You must include an in-text citation every time you quote or paraphrase from a source e. It is mainly used by students and researchers in humanities fields such as literature, languages, and philosophy. MLA style uses title case, which means that all principal words nouns, pronouns , verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions are capitalized.

This applies to titles of sources as well as the title of, and subheadings in, your paper. Use MLA capitalization style even when the original source title uses different capitalization. The title of an article is not italicized in MLA style , but placed in quotation marks.

This applies to articles from journals , newspapers , websites , or any other publication. Use italics for the title of the source where the article was published. Use the same formatting in the Works Cited entry and when referring to the article in the text itself.

In MLA style , book titles appear in italics, with all major words capitalized. If there is a subtitle, separate it from the main title with a colon and a space even if no colon appears in the source. The format is the same in the Works Cited list and in the text itself. The title of a part of a book—such as a chapter, or a short story or poem in a collection—is not italicized, but instead placed in quotation marks. This quick guide to MLA style explains the latest guidelines for citing sources and formatting papers according to MLA.

Search by book title, page URL or journal DOI to automatically generate flawless citations, or cite manually using the simple citation forms. Other standard fonts such as Arial or Georgia are also acceptable.