English 104: College Composition

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While citing within a paper is very important, it is just as important to have a good Works Cited page. This video will take you through the steps of creating a stellar example to impress all your friends (maybe?) and professors (almost definitely).

What Is A Works Cited Page?

Works Cited is the information you learned from others that you utilized in your essay or other writing. While you cite sources within your text, you will also be compiling all those sources into one page that's called a Works Cited page when using MLA formatting. We can think of our Works Cited page as a friends list of sorts that we would have on a social networking site. Of course, instead of these being high school or college buddies of the past, this list is made up of individuals and organizations that provided the foundational research upon which your writing is built. Like your friends list, your Works Cited page has its own showing, and just like your friends list, it's one of the first things your readers will check! Your Works Cited page often determines the amount of credibility individuals will lend to your writing.

Works Cited Page Basics

Let's start with the formatting basics of a Works Cited page using MLA format.

1. Begin your Works Cited page on a separate piece of paper. The page should have a 1-inch margin as well as a header that includes your last name and the page number.
2. Label the page Works Cited. This should be centered at the top of the page.
3. Double-space entries. The easiest way to do this is to set your page to double-space. However, make sure not to hit the 'enter' key an additional time between entries.
4. Use a hanging indent for second lines and beyond. So while your first line of an entry is not indented, you want a 5-space indent for the second line and any additional lines per entry. Remember, don't indent the first line of any entry.
5. Capitalize each word in the title except for articles (i.e. 'the'), prepositions, or conjunctions, unless they are the first word in the title.
6. Entries are listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name. You'll be using the author's last name followed by a comma; then list the author's first name and middle name or initial.
7. List the medium of publication. This would be if the work was print, Web, film, etc.

Works Cited Page Examples

Now, let's look at how some of our entries would appear on our Works Cited page. Let's start with an authored book.

Stone, Tanya Lee. Up Close: Ella Fitzgerald. New York: Viking, 2008. Print.

The first thing we see is the author's name. We have her last name followed a comma, then her first and middle name. Next, we see the title of the book. Please notice the title of the book appears in italics. We then have the city of the publisher, a colon, then the name of the publisher. Next is a comma, then the year of publication. Finally we have the medium. If there are two authors, list both names separated by an 'and.' If there are three or more authors, you may choose to list all the names in the order in which they appear or list the first author followed by 'et al.'

Now, let's see an example of a journal article:

Opree, Suzanna J., Buijzen, Moniek, and Valkenburg, Patti M. 'Lower Life Satisfaction Related to Materialism in Children Frequently Exposed to Advertising.' Pediatrics 130.3 (2012): 486-491. Web. 20 September 2012.

Let's walk through this citation. The first thing we see is the name of the authors. This article has three authors and each is listed. Next, we see the title of the article. The title of the article should be surrounded by quotation marks. Next, we see the title of the journal; note that this was a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, one of the most common citations you will use in academic writing. Following the name of the journal is the volume number, then a period, followed by the issue number. In parentheses, we have the year of publication. After the addition of a colon we have the pages on which the article can be found. Now, the work we cited is an online version of a journal that also appears in print format, so we list the format that we read: Web. We then list the date that we accessed this article electronically.

Lesson Summary

In this video we covered the basics of a Works Cited page using MLA format along with the two most common citations you will use in academic writing, authored books and peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Let's recap once again our 7 basics of a Works Cited page.

1. Begin your Works Cited page on a separate piece of paper.
2. Label the page Works Cited, centering that at the top of the page.
3. Double-space entries.
4. Use a hanging indent of 5 spaces for second lines and beyond of entries.
5. Capitalize each word in the title except for articles (i.e. 'the'), prepositions, or conjunctions, unless they are the first word in the title.
6. Entries are listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name.
7. List the medium of publication.

Happy citing!