Week 11 — MLA Documentation

Welcome to your Week 11 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student listing the guidelines behind a care plan, a reporter showing an editor where each fact came from, and a policy intern attaching sources to a briefing memo all need a reader to find every source, exactly.

In plain language

When you use a source, your reader deserves two answers: who said this, and where can I find it? Documentation (the in-text citations and the list of sources that answer those two questions) gives both answers in a fixed pattern. This week you learn the pattern this course uses, MLA style (the system set by the MLA Handbook, ninth edition). You write a short pointer inside your sentence and a full works-cited entry (one source's complete record in the list at the end of the paper). You practice on the running draft's four real sources and on a speech transcript from a national archive.

• Already covered: Week 9 chose and judged the running draft's sources; Week 10 brought them into its sentences.
• This week: in-text citations, the works-cited entry and its container, formatting, and checking a machine's entry.
• How they connect: every source you integrated now gets a pointer and a full address.
• Where we're going next: Week 12, The Research-Based Argument.

Focus

Says who, and where can I find it? How do I show a reader exactly where each source came from?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] write an in-text citation in MLA's author-page form
• [ ] build a works-cited entry from the nine core elements
• [ ] tell a source from its container
• [ ] format the paper and the Works Cited list
• [ ] audit a machine-made entry on format and on facts

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 11 (about 50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Writing Studio (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

Checkpoint: write the running draft's four works-cited entries in order, with a matching in-text citation for each.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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