MLA FORMAT

Westhill High School uses the MLA (Modern Language Association) format as the standard for writing citations and documenting sources.

Citation Examples: Click here to view examples of citations for different formats.

Parenthetical Documentation: Click here to view information about documenting sources in the text. Parenthetical documentation is used in MLA instead of footnotes.

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RESOURCES FOR LITERARY CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY

GALE RESEARCH SERIES
A series of multivolume sets in the 800 section of the reference collection that contains information about specific titles (including a summary), about authors and critical essays on their works.

• Novels for Students 809 NOV
• Short Stories for Students 809.3 SHO
• Poetry for Students 809.1 POE

CRITICAL ESSAYS:

• CLC (Contemporary Literary Criticism) 809.04 CON Collections of critical essays written about the works of authors. Each volume is arranged in alphabetical order. The author index in each volume indexes all preceding volumes of CLC and other titles in the Gale series.
• TCLC (Twentieth Century Literary Criticism) 809.04 GAL Same as CLC for authors who died between 1900 and 1960. WHS has vols. 1-42.
• NCLC (Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism) 809.04 NIN Same as CLC for authors who died between 1800 and 1900. WHS has vol. 1-3 only (see Ferguson Library for others).
• SSC (Short Story Criticism) 809.3 SHO (Red set) Same as CLC but the essays are about short stories. WHS has vols. 1-25.

  Citation example: Information about original publication first, then information about the book where you found it:
  Wilson, Edmund. "John Steinbeck." Classics and Commercials. (1950): 35-45. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale, 1978. 13:529-530.

CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION:

• DLB (Dictionary of Literary Biography) 809 DIC (Blue set) Signed articles on authors and their works with considerable comment on their works.
• CDALB (Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography) 810.9 CON (Red/blue set) We have the volumes that include 1640 through 1968. American authors only.

  Citation example:
  Lewis, Marvin A. "Alejandro Morales." Chicano Writers: Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 82:178-183.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:

• CA (Contemporary Authors) 808 CON (Tan and Blue/Orange set) Biographic information on authors still living or deceased since 1960. WHS has vol. 1- 110.
• CANR (Contemporary Authors New Revision Series) 808.7 CON (Blue/Green set) Revisions of entries in CA when authors publish more and become established. WHS has vol. 1-40.
• CAP (Contemporary Authors Permanent Series) 920 CON (Tan/Red set) Biographical information on authors no longer publishing since 1975.
• SATA (Something About the Author) 810.9005 COM (Yellow/blue set) Biographical information on authors of books for children and young adults.

  Citation example:
  Slethaug, Gordon. "Knowles, John 1926- ." Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Ed. Susan M. Trosky. Detroit: Gale, 1993. 40:239-243.

ELECTRONIC SOURCES for CRITICISM AND BIOGRAPHY:

CT Digital Library

Literature Resource Center - Biography and critical essays
DISCovering Authors - Find author biographies and critical essays.
Student Resource Center Gold - Find authors under people section. Includes biographical and critical essays about many authors.

Wilson Biographies Plus - Find biographies of famous people as well as authors.

Citation example:
Wolfe, Peter. "The Impact of Knowles's A Separate Peace. " University Review. Mar 1970: 36:3.189-198. Rpt in DISCovering Authors, CT Digital Library. Westhill High School Lib., Stamford, CT. 4 September 1999.

Internet - World Wide Web

There may be critical and biographical information on web sites. Be cautious - some of them are other students' work (often .com) or are sites (such as Amazon.com) that are selling the book and include informal reviews created by buyers.  Such reviews are not appropriate for school assignments. Educational sites (.edu sites) can be quite useful.

Sparknotes and Pink Monkey are great places to find a plot summary, but they are poor sites for literary criticism

 

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