Hey all, I was unsure if this was the right place to post this, but I'm having some trouble with citing an essay. It's supposed to be in MLA format which I'm familiar with to an extent, but I must have a works cited and the only reference is going to be from a novel. I tried googling to see what I do in this case, because to me it seems it would be tedious in the essay to keep citing the same author over and over again with only the page number being different. The more specific I get the more I find unrelated things. If you're confused I'm basically wondering how I am suppose to cite just a single book within the essay and the works cited without being repetitive. All help appreciated. Edit: I cannot contact the instructor for info.
If I remember correctly, you only have to cite the author the first time. After that you can cite only the page number as long as it's from the same book. Since you are only using one book, this should be fairly straightforward. Try googling "MLA sample paper" or something similar. It should give you an idea how to cite references.
Sure, and when material from one source and the same page numbers are used throughout a paragraph, use one citation at the end of the paragraph instead of a citation at the end of each sentence. You'll only briefly cite the work even on the first mention--the information cited will be given in full in your Works Cited alphabetical list. Try looking at Purue OWL--their guidelines for MLA are quite clear.
Look up the term op cit. in connection with MLA citation. It's relevant to multiple passages from the same opus.
Oh I appreciate that, but what about the actual works cited page? It's seems funny to me that it only has one line, even though I was instructed to only have a single source.
If a single source is what is called for (unusual!), then a single bibliography entry is perfectly appropriate. Every college-level instructor I ever had insisted on three or more sources for each paper.
Are you sure that when your tutor said one 'source', he/she didn't mean write an essay on one WORK, investigating different ideas/crits about the work from various sources? Sorry, I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but as Cog says, that's kind of unusual, and why do you have to use MLA citation if you're only using one source? You could just put it in the title: '.....'s view of (whatever) in (name of work)'. The last time I did an essay citing only one source (or less, i.e. no source!) was when I was about 14, before I started my GCE O Level English Literature studies...
Yeah my personal associate said she needed a works cited page. She didn't mention getting resources on that one book from critics from different resources. Oh well, it'll be her fault if it's wrong. I was thinking in the works cited I would have to cite each quote from the paper that was referenced from the one source.
