Research and MLA Citation: An Introduction

Any time you write a research paper, you'll need to borrow someone else's words or ideas.  When you do this, you need to give the creator credit, or else you are plagiarizing their work.  Plagiarism is the theft of someone else's ideas or arrangements of words (basically, it's when you copy down something and don't say where you copied it from).  It is a very serious offense that will earn one severe punishment.

In order to avoid plagiarism and make verifying your sources easier, MLA has created a citation system.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) is a group that suggests formats for different writing types and styles.  Theirs is one of the most widely used styles for citation.

There are three main components of the MLA format when using citation:

1. The quotation or paraphrase (the use of someone else's ideas)
2. The in-text citation itself
3. The "Works Cited" page. 

Click on the words to find out more about these components of the MLA system.  Or click here to find out more about research.