On
Citation |
This page is provided to clarify how scholarly
citation works. Below you'll find basic guidelines and examples that will help you to
quote. For more information you may want to consult instructive references like the MLA
Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.), available in the library.
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Listing Works Cited:
The essays for this course must include a list of works cited. (Papers submitted without
such a list will be penalized.) All works quoted from or referred to in the essay must be
listed and should appear in alphabetical order. Titles of books and plays should be
underlined or italicized (e.g., Pinter's The Caretaker) and titles of poems, short
stories, and articles appear in quotation marks (e.g., Hardy's "The Harbour
Bridge"), although some book-length poems are exceptions (e.g., Eliot's The Waste
Land). Be sure to include the full title.
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Example:
Works Cited
Auden, W. H. "In Praise of
Limestone." Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Ed.
Keith Tuma. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 323-5.
Beckett, Samuel. Footfalls. Collected Shorter Plays.
New York: Grove P, 1984. 237-43.
---. Happy Days. New York: Grove P, 1961.
Drucker, Johanna. "Visual Performance of the Poetic
Text." Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1998. 131-61.
Monk, Geraldine. "Where?" Anthology of
Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Ed. Keith Tuma. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2001. 825.
Ong, Walter J. Hopkins, the Self, and God. Toronto:
U of Toronto P, 1993.
Orwell, George. "How the Poor Die." The
Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage. San Diego: Harcourt, 1984. 86-95.
Rabaté, Jean-Michel. "Pound, Joyce and Eco:
Modernism and the ‘Ideal Genetic Reader.'" The Romanic Review 86 (1995):
485-500.
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Quotations:
Quotations can be thought of as evidence exhibits in a court case: you are presenting your
argument, trying to convince a judge or jury of the validity of your interpretation, and
you need to introduce some evidence that the court may examine. This is a useful analogy
because it points to two key considerations to bear in mind when you quote or cite a work.
One is that evidence rarely speaks for itself. The prosecuting attorney does not merely
produce the weapon, point to it and say, "the prosecution rests." She must say
something about the weapon: she has to explain that this lead pipe was covered with the
defendant's fingerprints and the blood of the victim, that it was found buried in the
defendant's backyard, and so on. So too when you quote you need to introduce the material
and offer some kind of analysis or comment on it. The other consideration is that evidence
must be treated carefully. The lawyer who produces as evidence a videotape that has been
altered or edited to give a misleading picture can look forward to disbarment.
Misquotation similarly discredits your argument -- sometimes irreparably. Quote
judiciously, and quote with care.
A direct quotation is an instance where you reproduce, in
quotation marks, the words of another author. Indirect quotation can assume the form of a
paraphrase -- say, when you summarize an idea put forth by a critic in the course of your
discussion. Direct and indirect quotations in your essay should be followed by a citation
in parenthesis that will refer your reader to the work and page that you're quoting. If
it's clear which of the works listed as cited is being quoted (i.e., either there is only
one title in your works cited list or the context in which the quotation appears makes it
apparent which author you are quoting), a page number is all that is needed.
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Examples:
- Although Hopkins's vocabulary and cadences may seem exotic
or even highbrow, "all his thinking was rooted deep in the vernacular" (Ong
124).
- The image of blood signifies a shocking change in Mary
Morrissy's stories: one startlingly begins with a character waking "in a pool of
blood" ("A Lazy Eye" 41) while another concludes with an assault:
"Clara had drawn blood" ("A Curse" 229).
When quoting poems, instead of giving page numbers (though
you'll include them in your works cited list), provide line numbers. Note that poetry's
appearance on the page is an integral part of poetry's definition, so you need to observe
line breaks.
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Examples:
- In "The Plaza", Charles Tomlinson focuses on what
is unobserved, what "nobody sees" and "nobody hears" (64).
- MacDiarmid occasionally displays a fondness for paradox and
pretty distinctions: "They are not endless these variations of form / Though it is
perhaps impossible to see them all" (712-3).
Quotations that run longer than four lines in your essay
(and sections of dialogue between characters in a play) should be set apart from the text
of your essay. Use two tab spaces from the left margin. The parenthetical citation then
stands outside of the quotation's punctuation.
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Examples:
In The Ambassadors, part of Strether's dilemma is his need
to reconcile aesthetics with ethics, and when he observes Chad's laughter at the idea of
his being pitched into a bonfire, he is forced to consider how manners and taste are
linked:
[Chad] was altogether easy about it, and this made
Strether now see how
at bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him nothing,
he had from the first moment been easy about everything. The shade of
shyness was mere good taste. (106)
Churchill's play is itself a game, one in which words can conceal meanings. Consider the
reactions of each of the characters to the chance to play a game, and the way in which
Churchill relies upon the audience's awareness of other meanings for words like
"straight":
HARRY: Hide and seek. I'll be it. Everybody must hide.
This is the base, you have to get home to base.
EDWARD: Hide and seek, hide and seek.
HARRY: Can we persuade the ladies to join us?
MAUD: I'm playing. I love games.
BETTY: I always get found straight away. (266)
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Plagiarism:
Quotation and citation permit a writer to acknowledge the
work of others and to engage in dialogue with those other authors. Plagiarism, the act of
presenting another's written work as one's own, will not be tolerated in this course. All
the assignments in this course represent an opportunity for you to articulate your own
thoughts: you can by all means use other writings to support your argument, but you need
both to cite them carefully and to remember that it is your opinions and ideas that are
being asked for. If any assignment or test submitted for this course is found to contain
plagiarism, the minimum penalty shall be a mark of zero on the assignment.
If you have specific concerns or questions about citing or
using another's work, you may feel free to approach the course instructor.
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