This video is about understanding MLA Style, and I mean the 8th edition,
that's the 2016 new one.
To talk us through I want to talk about some of the LOGIC of MLA Style,
and then get into some of the details of the little things that have changed.
When I talk about the logic, I mean big- picture stuff that hasn't changed.
Like, you wrote some work, and you sent it to an audience, and that audience was like,
"Hey, I want to know about the books that you cited, or the journal articles,
or the web sites that you went to!" In other words, they're reading your work,
and they see this citation pop up, and they're like, "Man! I want to learn more!
I want to go to the B section of your works cited page, and oh! There it is!
I can learn more, actually go to the website, and learn more."
Now that hasn't changed. That's the same logic as ever. So when I say I want to
talk about "the logic" here, I really mean the logic of documentation,
on the list of works cited, like how they're put together.
Ok, so: the thing that is new here is that MLA has this list of 9 things that you might
have or might not have for a lot of the things that you want to cite.
Whether it's a book or a journal article or a chair in a museum or a TV show you watch,
whatever it is that you're citing, you're gonna have some of these things.
And they say, "Hey! Put things in that order, with this punctuation, and everything
will be fine." Now notice that only 1, 2, & 9 have periods. And it's really subtle--
do you see them kind of turning yellow? OK. So they're saying that after 1, 2, & 9,
after you list the author, BAM! you put a period. Then you list the title of the source,
and then BAM! you put a period. And then, all that other stuff, you kind of list it,
and you do a comma after it, and a comma, and a comma comma comma,
until you get to the very last thing, and you put a final period. BAM!
It's that simple. So. In practice, let's say I want to cite a book that I read recently.
But when I start filling things in, with the right punctuation, right?
Put the author, period, BAM! The title, BAM! And then I have, number 7 is
a comma, and then I always put a period after my last thing, even if it's #8,
not #9. Does that make sense? I list them out, in the order they say, and then
I type it out on my works cited page exactly like that, with that exact same punctuation.
You see, in this case, I only have 1 comma, because I only have 1 thing in between
all of the others. Ok. Let's look at another example. What about that website
I mentioned earlier--there's this article on a website. In this case, I have the
author, of course, I have a title of source, of course, periods after both.
In this case I have a container, and "container" is kind of a complicated word,
I'll talk about a little bit more later, but the simplest way to think of it is
the container is where you get the smaller thing. So we all know that web ARTICLES
come on web SITES that have other titles. We all know that we watch TV shows
that the episode itself has a title, but it's part of a larger show! That larger
show is the CONTAINER. You might have a book that has a lot of chapters in it,
and if you cite just one chapter, that's the title, #2, but it's IN a larger container,
the title of the BOOK, #3. Ok. We'll talk a little bit more about that as it goes.
But for right now you notice that I put a comma after #3, because you always
put commas after #3; it came out on this date, comma, in this location, period.
So I put it all in that order, with that punctuation, and I get my list of works cited.
Not that hard. Well, what about one more thing? I was reading this academic article
the other day in this journal that I subscribe to the print version. And we see
the title of the article is #2, and it's in the larger container, which is the
title of the journal itself. Now this time I had #6, a number--I didn't have that in
the other ones! Great! So I'll slap that in, in the way I'm supposed to--
of course I'm not covering every little detail of how you write it out these days;
you can look that up yourselves; this is just big-picture. Now, notice #9, location,
is the page number. In my last one, if I can back up for a second, you saw my
location was a website! So the idea is, "Hey, you might get this stuff in the
LOCATION of a website, or you might find that article in the LOCATION of the page."
Those are parallel entries, here. The main thing, of course, right now, is the
punctuation. I put it in order, you see my periods go exactly where they should be,
and then I have commacommacommacomma, before the final period. Ok.
Logically, this makes a lot of sense for most things, but I know what you're thinking.
You're like, "Wait, you read that journal article in print?! You didn't find it on a
website, where everyone else finds it?" Or you're like, "You read that book?
That is SO 1998! What I do is read it on the Kindle reader, or perhaps on my
computer, or ebook, or you know, there's like electronic stuff."
Or--we haven't talked much about TV shows-- but what if I like pull out my Lost DVDs
because it's the best TV show of all time, and you're like, "Ha ha ha! You watch the DVDs?
Because I go to Netflix!" Well, MLA is flexible enough, especially these days,
to take that into account. It just takes a little bit of getting to know.
Quick warning: you have to "remember that there is often more than one correct way
to document a source." And you're like, "YOU could say that," but no! It's not just
me, the MLA Handbook itself says that! That's the real emphasis of edition 8,
is that things change, and things can be flexible. So--I mean, it's right there
in the book, that's how I would cite it-- so keep that in mind as we go forward.
Ok, so we've got our list of 9 things, right? Well, if we're doing some of this complicated
digital stuff, we have to think of it this way: you have the same stuff as before,
author/title of source, period-bam, period-bam, and then we have that first container,
which has commacommacomma, ends with a period--and then, what if that container
is like INSIDE another container? Well that's what we're gonna walk through.
Now notice really quickly the punctuation again: there's only 4 periods here, max:
the period in the middle, after #9, location of the FIRST container, is essentially
saying, "Hey, we're done with the first container here! Now let's move into where
you found, or where you accessed that." Ok. In practice, it's not as complicated
as it sounds. Remember that book I was talking about earlier? Here's the author,
title of source--just putting it over there because I don't have room--same content
as before: there's the publisher, there's the publication date. Period, bam.
Well, what if I was looking at it in the Kindle Cloud Reader? Well that's my
2nd container! That's the place I accessed that book. The location was at that location
there. So in my actual citation, it's as simple as that: I have the exact same citation
as before--that's that first line--and then I end it with a period, same as before,
but I add on the content for my 2nd container, ending that with a period.
Again, like I said, 4 periods max here, right? Bam bam bam bam.
Let's do another one. What about that academic journal article? There's my author,
there's my title. I have the exact same stuff as before, but now what if I got that
on a website? The article was in the container of the journal, and the journal was in
the container of this website, called Conference on College Composition--
I know it's a lot of words, but it's true. But in this case, I got that in this place.
Do you see a theme here? That my 2nd container, in most practical cases--not always, often--
will only have a title and a location. Because it's a digital thing. So I get this massive-looking
works cited entry, but the 1st part is exactly the same, and that 2nd part in red
is the only new part here. Ok, what about when I'm watching Lost, the best TV show ever,
and I want to cite something from Season 5, Episode 1, which is called "Because You Left."
Quick super-aside here is that when I'm citing TV shows, there really are a lot of ways
to cite it, based on what I want to emphasize. If I was talking about the director of this
episode, I could put "director" under other contributors, #4. Or I could say,
if I'm emphasizing Matthew Fox's stellar performance, I could put that. Or I could
say, "co-created by J.J. Abrams & Damon Lindelof & Jeffrey Lieber,"--I could put that
under other contributors. Even that #9, where I put "disc 1," that's kind of an
option here as well: it's me saying, "Hey I want to emphasize in my essay something
about the discs here." I really could leave that off and end it at 2009. But this is a
standard, OK-enough, citation, because things are inside other things, you know,
right? Like the episode is in the show, ok? So I could end up with this kind of entry.
You see the period after the title of source, then commacommacomma, period.
So what if I got it inside Netflix and I'm freaking out because like "Hey there's
this thing and it's inside another thing!"? Ok, so all I have to do is do the almost
the exact same citation, but notice that in this case, I don't have disc 1--I end it
after the 2009, and then I put my 2nd container. It's called Netflix, and the 2nd
container is located at this web address. It's actually not that hard. Ok.
So if we talk about the logic, I also want to talk about some of the specific details,
especially if you've been citing MLA a long time, and you want to know what specifically
is different. This isn't everything, just the things that to me, as a teacher, jumped out.
Well one, there's that string of commas, that you know, commacommacomma, is new
to me, and actually, I think that's a good thing. Compare that to the old version
of this exact same citation: there's all this like "period there, & put a parentheses there,
but then use a colon! And then put a..." I think it was more confusing! Now it's like,
come on, just put a bunch of commas. Another thing, if I compare the new to the old,
is that I used to have to always put at the end, "print" or "web" or "DVD" or,
you know, "museum piece," or "email" or whatever kind of thing. Now they're assuming,
"You know what, that's probably clear." They're saying like, "If you have that
page number there, that's good enough; it's not really necessary to SAY the word
'print'; you leave it off." Kind of cool. Another subtle difference you see in this one
is that I write "volume" and "issue" different. Again, I think if you're a student, this is
a good thing! There used to be that 66.3, if you look at the old one, and I think
a lot of people were like, "What does that even mean--66 is what? And 3 is what?
I don't even know what a volume and issue MEAN!" Now you actually write it out
to make it a little clearer. Similarly, you write page numbers a little different.
If you look at the old one there, it's like 402-26, And it's like, "Is that VOLUME 402
to ISSUE...what does that even mean?" So now you put pp. for multiple pages
or just p. for one page, to make it really clear: "Hey guys, we're talking about
page numbers." It's a clarity thing. Another thing you'll notice is that
URLs are back. They used to be in MLA and then they got rid of them, and now
they're back. This is the one thing that I'm a little iffy about, I don't know if you totally
need it. This is what it looks like now; if you look at the old one, you
left it off. The idea was that, if people can google this, they could probably find it.
I think part of this is that a lot of people are publishing things in digital spaces
these days, right? So if I turn my essay in digitally, someone might actually want
to just click it and go straight to it! They might not want to have to google it.
My guess is that's what they're doing. You also notice that in the old one,
you have to put the date that you accessed: "Hey, I got this on June 2nd, 2016!"
You don't have to do that anymore! I think it means that in practice, you don't have
to keep quite as much track of exactly when you got something. I think a lot
of people just made that date up, anyway. Come on, seriously.
The thing I'm most glad about is you used to have to put the "sponsor" of a site,
so this article from a website CALLED The Toast is owned by a company called
The Toast. In this case, it happens to be the same. It's not always, of course;
sometimes a website, it is useful to say, "This is who owns that, just so you know."
But often--I mean, the classic case is The New York Times: people are always
citing, "Oh, this is from the website called The New York Times, and it's owned by...
a company...called...The New York Times." You don't have to do that anymore.
Ok, so of those 7 things I just showed you, 3 of these are actually rules--like,
those are things that no matter what, you're gonna do. But some of these are
actually options! There actually is a place in the book where they remind you that
"Hey, you might want to include some of this stuff." In other words, maybe the sponsor
of your site is crucial to what you're talking about, you want to draw attention to it.
Maybe the medium of what you're talking about is really important, and you don't want
people to get confused. So you always have to be thinking of real people:
what might they need if they're actually looking up your stuff--what might they
want to know? Or not know? It's not just about, "Oh, I will follow the rules,
cause that's what I have to do." You're actually thinking of a real audience.
I actually really kind of like that. Big picture here: it means that
MLA Style is flexible, which is another way of saying that it varies by context,
which I think is cool!