Why Cite?
One of the most important reasons to cite your sources is to avoid plagiarism, which is a violation of the Foothill College Academic Integrity Policy. Citing your sources is a standard academic practice that helps your reader find the resources you used to write your paper. You might think of it as leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for your reader to follow through your research process. It provides evidence to support your work and increases your credibility.
When to Cite?
Whenever you copy a paragraph, a sentence, or a phrase from an article, book, website, etc., you must put quotation marks around it and cite it, i.e., state where the quote came from. Even if you paraphrase information you have read, it is necessary to give credit to the author by citing where you found the information. There is an exception: You are not required to cite "common knowledge," facts that many people know or can easily find out; for example, the Earth orbits the sun. However, it is not always clear what is considered common knowledge. Does everyone in your class know that Walt Whitman was an American poet? If you're not sure whether something is common knowledge, it's best to be on the safe side and cite it.
The Library now offers the the full text of the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook online! Access also includes a video course that teaches
the principles of MLA documentation style through a series of short videos paired with quizzes, plus a final assessment.
Foothill Library Guide-Citing Sources MLA style 9th edition (PDF)
Be sure to use a hanging indent when you format your citations. Here are some sites which help describe how to format hanging indent in Word or GoogleDoc:
Be sure to use the same punctuation as the sample.
You may not have all the parts of the core elements, but use all the ones you have.
Dillon, Lindsey. “Race, Waste, and Space: Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental Justice at the Hunters Point Shipyard.” Antipode, vol. 46, no. 5, Nov. 2014, pp. 1205–21. EBSCOhost, https://foothill.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=98857209&site=ehost-live.
Broadcast TV or Radio Program
Begin with the title of the episode in quotation marks. Provide the name of the series or program in italics. Also include the network name, call letters of the station followed by the date of broadcast and city, if available.
“Flint’s Deadly Water.” Frontline. PBS, 10 Sep. 2019.
Tuck, Dana. "Volunteers Lend Hands.” San Jose Mercury
News 20 Apr. 2008, p. B2.
"The Secret Life Of The Sonoran Desert." Talk of the Nation, 29 Mar. 2013. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A324623606/OVIC?u=foothill_main&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=37ca782c
NoodleTools is a citation tool that will help you create citations and much more! Use it when you start your research to organize your sources, take notes, and write outlines.