{"id":7869,"date":"2025-11-28T10:01:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/mla-citation-examples\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T10:01:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:01:59","slug":"mla-citation-examples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/mla-citation-examples\/","title":{"rendered":"Mla Citation Examples"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alright, let me take you back to my sophomore year of college\u2014picture me hunched over a laptop at 2 a.m., Red Bull in hand, trying to figure out why my professor circled every single one of my citations in angry red pen. Turns out, I\u2019d been formatting my Works Cited page like it was 2005 (thanks, outdated high school guidebook). If you\u2019re staring at your screen right now thinking, <em>\u201cHow hard can italics and parentheses really be?\u201d<\/em>\u2014oh, friend, I\u2019ve been there. Let\u2019s break this down without the jargon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s what finally clicked for me:<\/strong><br \/>\nMLA is like assembling IKEA furniture. If you skip the instructions, you\u2019ll end up with a wobbly bookshelf (or in this case, a paper that screams \u201cI Googled this 5 minutes before submitting\u201d). The biggest game-changer? Realizing <em>every<\/em> source type has a pattern.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<h3>The \u201cAha!\u201d Moment (And How to Steal It)<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p><strong>In-Text Citations Are Just Breadcrumbs<\/strong><br \/>\nYou know when you\u2019re texting a friend directions like <em>\u201cTurn left at the Starbucks\u201d<\/em>? That\u2019s basically what in-text citations do. They point readers to the full entry on your Works Cited page. For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>One scholar argues that TikTok dances are the new hieroglyphics (Smith 42).<\/em><br \/>\nIf the author\u2019s name is in the sentence, just add the page number:<\/li>\n<li><em>According to Smith, TikTok dances are the new hieroglyphics (42).<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My rookie mistake? Forgetting the parentheses entirely\u2014like leaving a friend stranded at the Starbucks.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Works Cited = Recipe Cards<\/strong><br \/>\nImagine you\u2019re writing down your grandma\u2019s cookie recipe. You\u2019d list <em>every<\/em> ingredient, right? MLA works the same way. Key elements: <strong>Author. \u201cTitle.\u201d Container, Other Contributors, Version, Publisher, Date.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Example for a book:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Smith, Jessica. <em>Why Your Cat Judges You<\/em>. Penguin, 2021.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a website (the one that tripped me up for weeks):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Smith, Jessica. \u201cDecoding Cat Eyebrows.\u201d <em>Pet Psychology Today<\/em>, 15 Mar. 2022, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petpsychologytoday.com\/cat-eyebrows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.petpsychologytoday.com\/cat-eyebrows<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pro tip: If you\u2019re citing a YouTube video (yes, even that TED Talk you watched), treat it like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Lee, Melissa. \u201cRethinking Cat Eyebrows.\u201d <em>YouTube<\/em>, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 5 Sept. 2021, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=12345\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.youtube.com\/watch?v=12345<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<hr>\n<h3>Stuff I Wish I\u2019d Known Sooner<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The \u201cHanging Indent\u201d Scare<\/strong>: Highlight your Works Cited entries and drag that tiny slider on the ruler tab in Word. It\u2019s less dramatic than it sounds.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Citation Generators Are Frenemies<\/strong>: Sites like Scribbr or Citation Machine save time, but <em>always<\/em> double-check them. I once cited \u201cWikipedia\u201d as a publisher. My professor still brings it up at alumni events.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The 9th Edition Sneak Attack<\/strong>: MLA updated their rules in 2021. Biggest change? They now use \u201ccontainers\u201d for online sources (think: website titles, streaming platforms).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<h3>Why Bother? (Besides Not Failing)<\/h3>\n<p>Learning MLA is like mastering parallel parking\u2014it\u2019s awkward at first, but soon you\u2019ll do it without sweating. And honestly? It makes you look like someone who <em>actually<\/em> cares about giving credit where it\u2019s due (unlike that one kid who copy-pasted a BuzzFeed quiz).<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you take one thing away:<\/strong><br \/>\nMLA isn\u2019t about memorization. It\u2019s about patterns. Nail the basics, keep Purdue OWL bookmarked, and when in doubt, ask yourself: <em>\u201cWould my 10th-grade English teacher side-eye this?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve got this. And if all else fails, there\u2019s always more Red Bull.  \u2615 (Just don\u2019t forget to cite it.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alright, let me take you back to my sophomore year of college\u2014picture me hunched over a laptop at 2 a.m., Red Bull in hand, trying to figure out why my professor circled every single one of my citations in angry red pen. Turns out, I\u2019d been formatting my Works Cited page like it was 2005&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oreateai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}