Work Cited / Bibliography

As we enter back into our research course from spring break, today's lesson is an extremely necessary aspect of the writing process: Work Cited page. Though we have gone over individual text citations, today is our day of focusing on the odds and ins of creating a readable, efficiently written, reader-friendly Work Cited page.

General Rules to live by:

1. The author is always cited first. The only exception is that if the author is anonymous or corporate. Also, it's last name, first name.

2. For multiple authors unknown authors and corporate authorship, follow the guide here.

3. Alphabetize citations by author's last name. This helps readers find the complete Work Cited citation quickly (since you use the last name in in-text citations). If no author: use title of the source.

4. Indent the second line one of an individual citation, and single-space.

5. Provide one space between individual citations, so that each can be seen as separate.

6. Formatting titles:

• Italics (or underlining) are for complete sources: books, anthologies, reference sources (dictionary, encyclopedia), magazine or journal titles, film/ tv shows, albums, long poems and plays published on their own, works of art, specific legal cases (Roe v. Wade).

• Quotation marks (" ") are for small sources: chapter in a book, article in a newspaper/mag, song title, official title of an art exhibit, a particular episode of a tv or radio show (Chuck = show; "Chuck versus the Pink Slip"=an episode)

7. In 2010, in MLA, you no longer cite the URL/web address for on-line sources. As we will have gone over, this is messy-ugly and the web address should appear NOWHERE in your essay or Work Cited page.

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Homework for next two classes:

Friday, April 2nd:

***We will NOT be meeting in class so that students can accomplish a few things:

1) Accumulate more sources for Work Cited page of final essay. Some of you need to majorly catch up by getting to the library and getting some secondary source material.

2) By e-mail, by 2pm Friday (4/2), for attendance credit: I want to read about what kind of final essay you are envisioning. I would like you to provide me with at least three well-developed paragraphs that:

• propose a title for your essay, and why this title

• what is your current vision for organizing your essay; provide the general structure you are thinking about using. It might help you to think of and explain through texts that you admire the way they've been put together. (You must provide a thought-out structure; meaning: you can't say "I haven't thought of that yet." Saying something along this line will get you an absence, and further demonstrate a lack of engagement.)

• Who is a writer that inspires you? How do they influence your writing, and how do they influence how you WANT to write your final essay?

• What are you thinking will be the main subject of your writing on your subject-culture? What is something in the culture that you feel represents/symbolizes the way you see the culture? How so?

Wednesday, April 7th:

• Have read Translating Culture: "Chapter 8: Finding a Focus"

• Bring in a typed draft of your final essay's Work Cited page with at least six secondary sources cited that you've been using, or have read and intend to use. Make sure that they are, in fact, secondary sources and not primary sources!