MLA format is one of the most popular choices by authors that create research paper in English. In order to come up with an efficient bibliography section, there are some ideas that you should keep in mind. Most of the time, you will use the heading “Works Cited” to introduce the section where you list the references. The entries should be in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Read this post to find out more about MLA style.
Important points
If the name of the author is unknown, you should proceed to order the work by the title ignoring works like A, An or The. All the dates contain the months abbreviated except for the following: May, June and July. You can use either the day-month-year style, e.g. 9 Nov 2015, or the month-day-year style, e.g. Nov 9, 2015.
If you are creating your paper by hand, you should underline the title of the works cited in order to highlight these words. Otherwise, you are able to use italics on any writing software if you prefer. The first line of any entry in the bibliography section should be flush left and the following indented ½ “. This kind of arrangement rule is named hanging indentation.
About capitalization, the first letter of any relevant word should be capitalized in the titles. The rest of the words, such as abbreviations and part of the works, should be lowercased. In addition, the publisher’s name is abbreviated whenever possible. The most common separation for author, title and publication is a period and a space. Quotation marks are used for unpublished works only.
About the format
There a few choices that you can make regarding minor details but the MLA standards are quite thorough about the style. It is advisable to follow the instructions to the letter in order to avoid confusion in future corrections. In this regard, you will find handbooks where authors explain how to apply the format to cite any source. Most likely, you will be listing books, articles and some websites. There, you will find plenty of information regarding these issues and useful tips that will make the creation process easier.