UNDERSTANDING DOCUMENTATION STYLES

The Norton Field Guide covers the documentation styles of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). MLA style is used chiefly in the humanities; APA is used mainly in the social sciences. Both are two-part systems, consisting of (1) brief in-text parenthetical documentation for quotations, paraphrases, or summaries and (2) more-detailed documentation in a list of sources at the end of the text. MLA and APA require that the end-of-text documentation provide the following basic information about each source you cite:

• author, editor, or organization providing the information
• title of work
• place of publication
• name of organization or company that published it
• date when it was published
• for online sources, date when you accessed the source

MLA and APA are by no means the only documentation styles. Many other publishers and organizations have their own style, among them the University of Chicago Press and the Council of Science Editors. We focus on MLA and APA here because those are styles that college students are often required to use. On the following page are examples of how the two parts—the brief parenthetical documentation in your text and the more-detailed information at the end—correspond. The top of the page shows the two parts according to the MLA system; the bottom, the two parts according to the APA system.

As the examples show, when you cite a work in your text, you can name the author either in a signal phrase or in parentheses. If you name the author in a signal phrase, give the page number(s) in parentheses; when the author's name is not given in a signal phrase, include it in parentheses.

The examples here and throughout this book are color-coded to help you see the crucial parts of each citation: tan for author and editor, yellow for title, and green for publication information: city of publication, name of publisher, year of publication, page number(s), and so on. Comparing the MLA and APA styles of listing works cited or references reveals some differences: MLA includes an author's first name while APA gives only the initial; MLA puts the date at the end while APA places it right after the author's name; MLA underlines titles of long works while APA italicizes them; MLA capitalizes most of the words in the title and subtitle while APA capitalizes only the first words of each. Overall, however, the styles provide similar information: each gives author, title, and publication data.



MLA Style

IN-TEXT DOCUMENTATION

As Lester Faigley puts it, "The world has become a bazaar from which to
shop for an individual 'lifestyle' " (12).

As one observer suggests, "The world has become a bazaar from
which to shop for an individual 'lifestyle' " (Faigley 12).

WORKS-CITED DOCUMENTATION

Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject
     of Composition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992.

APA Style

IN-TEXT DOCUMENTATION

As Faigley (1992) suggested, "The world has become a bazaar from
which to shop for an individual 'lifestyle' " (p. 12).

As one observer has noted, "The world has become a bazaar from which
to shop for an individual 'lifestyle' "(Faigley, 1992, p. 12).

REFERENCE-LIST DOCUMENTATION

Faigley, L. (1992). Fragments of rationality: Postmodernity and the
     subject of composition. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.