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Many of the rules that applied to a book will be the same for creating a citation for a database article.
This includes how the authors are listed, how things are capitalized, and many of the same punctuation rules.
For database articles all the information we will need to create the citation can be found in the record,
like this one from the database Academic Search Complete.
For this citation we will use Purdue OWL’s MLA Formatting and Style Guide.
Since we found the article by using an online database,
we will select Electronic Sources and scroll down until we find An Article from an Online Database.
When we read the basic guidelines, we find out that we should cite the article as if it were in print.
Then we’ll add information at the end of the citation to indicate that it came from a database.
This means we’ll go back to the top and select MLA Works Cited Page: Periodicals.
We’re going to cite this magazine article.
There is a difference between how you cite a magazine article and how you cite a journal article.
To cite this article it looks like we’ll need the author, article title, magazine title, date of publication, and page numbers.
Remember, we have this information at the top of the article record in the database.
Like a book citation, we’ll type Last Name - Comma - First Name - Period.
If there are multiple authors, we’ll follow the same rules that we would for a book.
Next, we’ll type the article title using the same capitalization rules as with a book title.
However, instead of italics, the article title will be in quotes.
A period is at the end of the title before the closing quotation mark.
Why do we use quotation marks instead of italics?
In MLA quotation marks are used to indicate shorter works like chapters within a book or articles within a magazine.
Italics indicate longer works like entire books, websites, movies, etc.
Next is the magazine’s title.
This will be in italics following the usual rules of capitalization.
There is no punctuation after the magazine title.
Instead, we will simply include the date of publication with the day first followed by the month abbreviated and then the year.
The year is followed by a colon.
If an article does not have a specific date or is published monthly, simply include the abbreviated month followed by the year or just the year.
Here is a listing of how months should be abbreviated in MLA style.
Notice that May, June, and July do not have to be abbreviated.
Lastly, we’ll include the page range for this article.
If the article is only one page, simply put that page number.
Do not include the number of pages of an article.
Now, if we typed - Print - Period
we would have a finished citation for a print magazine article.
However, this is an article from a database.
Let’s go to OWL and back to the section about Articles from an Online Database.
We need to include the database’s name, Web to indicate an online format, and the date of access.
We will type the database’s name in italics followed by a period.
For online resources use the format Web - Period.
Finally, type the date of when you found the article following the same rules mentioned previously,
the day followed by the abbreviated month and then the year followed by a period.
You include this date of access, because online sources frequently change.
It’s important for your reader to know when you found a source.
Now, let’s do a quick recap using a journal article from a database.
The citation will almost be the same except we will not type the full date of the article,
just the year while including the volume and issue number.
Again, all of this information can be found in the article record of the database.
First, we’ll type the authors following the rules mentioned before.
Next, there comes the article title followed by a period enclosed in quotation marks.
Now wait a minute, why are the thes in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report capitalized
when they aren’t beginning the article’s title or are after a colon?
And why is The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in italics?
Here we have titles of television shows within our article title, so we use italics to indicate that these are longer works.
Moreover, we capitalize the Thes, since they begin each show’s name.
This just shows that citing in MLA can get tricky at times, so always ask for help if you need it.
We’ll now type the journal title in italics with no other punctuation.
Now, for a journal article we will include the Volume Number - Period - Issue Number.
After this we’ll type the year of publication within parentheses, followed by a colon.
Finally, we’ll include the page number or numbers of the article followed by a period.
Now if we type Print - Period after the page numbers, we have the full citation for a print journal article.
To make it a database article, we’ll simply type the database name, Academic Search Complete, in italics followed by a period.
Then we’ll type Web - Period to indicate it’s an online format.
Finally, we’ll type the date of access with the day followed by the abbreviated month and then the year followed by a period.
Now we have the citation for a journal article found in a database.
In the next tutorial we’ll discuss creating citations for websites and web pages.