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In this video, i'm going to demonstrate how to create MLA
citations for websites
the basic format is the author's last name, comma their first name
then the web page title in quotes
the website title in italics
then the publisher comma publication date then the medium which in most cases
is going to be web for website but if you are, say, doing a youtube video it
would be video or if you're
citing a particular picture or image, you could put image there
and then finally you end it with the date you accessed it
MLA no longer requires that you put the URL at the end of the citation
if you think that someone can find the actual page that you were citing with
just the web page title
and say
the author's last name and putting them in google the you don't have to put the
URL there
but if you think that there's any sort of case where they might not be able to
track down your original thing it's a good idea to put the URL there anyway
now the internet is not standardized so there's a lot of times when you can't
find all of this information
and that's ok. MLA has ways to deal with that
if you don't know who actually wrote a particular item that you're citing
you just leave out the author's name and start with the web page title
if you don't have a web page title, if it's like a home page or you can't figure
out what the web page title is, you can just start with the website title
if you can't figure out who the specific publisher is, who is the person who is
paying for this to be put on the internet
Then you can put N.p. in place of publisher
And if for whatever reason, there is no publication date or copyright date,
then you just write n.d.
but in all of those cases
in every single web citation, you should have
you should have the publisher and publication date in there, even if it is
n dot p dot comma
n dot d dot
also i will point out that a lot of times on the internet the publisher is
the same as the website title because coca cola company bought the
coca cola dot com u r l and would like to
name their website after themselves and they're paying for it to
be out there so they are the website title and publisher
in that case
you still need to identify them separately so you would have to coca cola in italics
period
coca-cola the publisher organization
comma and the publication date that they released it. The first thing we're
going to try to cite is this article on sequestration
So the first thing that we're looking for is the author's name and in this
case, we have it: it's travis waldron
so we do last name first
comma his first name
and then you do the web page title
in quotes
so the difference between a website title in a web page title is a website
is made of many pages
the page title is the thing that changes
on each page
the website title is the thing usually across the top that stays the same
So if I got to other
pages on this website
i notice that this is changing down here
but think progress up at the top is always going to stay the same
no matter which article i go to this is the actual information that i'm
citing and this is the title of that article
but this up at the top is staying the same
so what's at the top of the actual information that i'm citing, the actual article that
i'm citing is the web page title
and the thing at the top that doesn't ever change is the website title
so in the case of our original article here
the webpage trial is sequestration drives up
fees on federal student loans
Alright sequestration drives up
fees on federal student loans
Alright, so then the website title is the thing that stays the same
So in that case, that's
think progress
and we put that in italics
the next thing we're looking for is the publisher, so who is actually paying for
this to be out on the internet
oftentimes you can go all the way down to the bottom of the screen
and it's usually the person who owns the copyright, in that case, this is the center for
american progress action fund
we'll just copy that
come over here, they are our publisher
the publication date, the date that it was actually
written was march eighteen
and we need to format it in the MLA format, which is date
and then the first three letters of the month
and then the year. This is the website so we'll put Web
and then the date that I actually accessed it. Today happens to be happens to be
The eighteen of June
twenty thirteen
Now i know that somebody can just google and come up with my article so i don't need
to put the URL at the end but if there was any sort of question about that
by all means i can copy the URL and put it at the end. i don't need to though. This in
and of itself is that correct MLA citation for that website
We'll make that a little bit smaller
So we have room to try another one
Alright so who is the author?
Let's say I wanted to cite
this particular fact
who actually wrote this fact
well i can kind of go up to here to View History and see everybody who's
contributed to this particular article
but i don't know which one of these people
or IP addresses actually wrote
the fact
that sequestrare is derived from sequester
So in this case i'm just gonna leave author blank because i don't know
who's the actual person who wrote the fact that i would have cited
if we don't have the author, than we just start with the page title and again the page title
is the thing that changes with whatever page you go to you
and in case the wikipedia it's usually the article title
so the article title
is sequestration
law
alright then the
site title is the thing that's gonna stay the same no matter which one of these
wikipedia articles I go to, and that's this header up here so it's wikipedia
and we put that
in italics
then we have the publisher
so who actually claims the copyright for this?
In this case, this is the Wikimedia foundation is the actual organization
that funds it
when was this last published or updated. Do we have an update date?
Can we find one?
Looking around, sometimes it's at the top, sometimes it's at the bottom
Last modified on the twenty first of february
so 21
february twenty thirteen
this is a website
and again i accessed it on the eighteenth of june
twenty thirty
for our last example, we'll do this website from the white house
so
let's say I wanted to cite the information that president obama has
been working together to reduce our deficit by two point five trillion
alright who actually wrote that little bit of data? who was the person who
attached their name to that
and it doesn't look like there is actually an author
for that particular piece of data. so again we're just going not going to have
an author so
if we don't have an author, we just start with the web page title. So the web page
title is the name of the thing that's gonna change when i go to different
places
so it looks like what is the sequester is the name of the page title
'cause when i go to other places this is staying the same so that's the
website title
but this is changing so 'what is the sequester?' is the name of our page
the web site title is going to be the white house
because that's the thing that's staying the same
and so we're going to put that in italics
then we need the publisher
and in this case the publisher is
looks like
white house dot gov
so just the white house
and again this is the case where they
are the organization that is paying for this
to be out on the internet and the publisher name happens to be
the same as the site title but you still need to repeat it
the publication date
do we know when this was released on the internet
I'm not seeing a particular date
not even seeing a copyright date
so i'm gonna say
no date
so n dot d dot
again, this is a website
and i got it on the eighteenth
of
june
twenty thirteen
and that's basically how you do it
if you don't have a publisher
uh... if you don't know the specific organization that's paying for the
electricity
you would just do n dot p dot comma n dot d dot
you still need to have
the publisher and the date in there even if you don't know what they are
you could leave out the author if you don't know who the author is, you can leave out the page title
if you don't have a specific page title but you should always have at least
a cite title
the publisher
the date, web, and the date that you accessed it
The reason why we say
include the date that you accessed it is because if i go back and double-check your
information
and i see that it was updated say on june
thirtieth
and you cited it on june eighteenth, then i know that the information i'm reading is
different than the information that you were reading back when you cited it
so maybe what you cited has been corrected or changed or is no longer
accurate. It's just more information for the people who are following up on your
citations