Parenthetical documentation–anytime you use someone else’s ideas (from a book, website, magazine, interview, etc.) in quoted form or even paraphrased, you must indicate to your reader that you are using someone else’s expert ideas by putting a reference in parentheses. Often what you’ll see in paretheses will be the author’s last name (if you know it) or possibly the name of the article, for example.

Works Cited page (in “the olden days” this was called a Bibilography in a research paper, but in MLA terms it is called a Works Cited page). This is your list of ALL sources you actually used in your research paper/project. Not sources you read and thought about using, but ones you actually used. What’s in your parenthetical documenation matches what you find on this page. Also, it should be alphabetized with a hanging indentation of entries.

My students generally find these websites very helpful in formatting their MLA style documentation. The first one is more user-friendly if you don’t have a lot of experience with MLA documentation. A word of caution though—the formatting will only be as good as the information you enter, so you may need to go back to the source to find the author’s name, the city/year it was published, or last time the website was updated, etc. Please do not rely on your memory alone!

1. Son of Citation Machine @ http://citationmachine.net/. This is a free website. (On the left you can choose MLA from a list of other formats). This site will not only help you with your Works Cited page, but provide you with some help on the parenthetical documenation as well.

2. Noodle Tools – This has both a “pay” service and a free service. The free service is under “Noodle Bib Express”. http://noodletools.com/

Best Wishes!

Use http://www.easybib.com to basically generate the format that MLA uses and on the main page it gives you an option for an annotation too. It under where it says, “Start your bibliography right here by selecting a source below.”

For an annotated bibliography, use standard MLA format for the citations(use easybib.com; it does it for you :), then add a brief abstract for each entry, including:

· 2 to 4 sentences to summarize the main idea(s) of the item, and

· 1 or 2 sentences to relate the article to your research topic, your personal experience, or your future goals (if part of your assignment) or to add a critical description.

It isn’t as bad as it looks.

Here is an example of an annotation, my friend…http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_annotatedbibEX.html

Good luck, mate…and let me know if you need anymore help.