DB9

Professor Hardy / 1020

Example for MLA Discussion board post:

The article title and author: “Holy and Unholy Ghosts: The Legacy of the Father in the Plays of August Wilson” written by Gaylord Brewer Original passage from source/article as presented by Gaylor Brewer:

From his father, Troy inherits the burden of economic responsibility for the family. Meanwhile, he becomes the same emotionally estranged tyrant. His impulse toward fatherhood, which results in children by three women, also ironically ensures his relative failure as a father in any of those families. He wants his sons to have more possibilities in life yet myopically curtails options.

Note: For this example, I am going to assume that this is the first time introducing the source to readers and I want to establish “ethos” (credibility). I can use a signal phrase to introduce the source; as such, use source's full name and perhaps even give an indication of credentials. Then, any subsequent references to source, can be by last name only, as indicated below: Direct quotation from the above original passage:

Gaylord Brewer, noted author of “Holy and Unholy Ghosts: The Legacy of the Father in the Plays of August Wilson,” asserts that, “From his father, Troy inherits the burden of economic responsibility for the family. Meanwhile, he becomes the same emotionally estranged tyrant” (par. 12).

*This is an example where the signal phrase with credentials is clear, a strong signal phrase verb, “asserts” is used, the quotation is smoothly integrated into the text of the sentence and the in-text citation indicates the MLA abbreviation for paragraph 12. Often stable page numbers are not given for electronic documents (do NOT use print out numbers if you print out the articles), so you should strive for a paragraph number for the citation. However, if you want to use a quote or paraphrase from the end of a very lengthy article and counting the number of paragraphs is laborious, you can simply place the author’s last for the citation—i.e. (Brewer).

Then, below is an example of a later reference from this source (as you can quote from your sources more than once); since the full name of author was given prior, use last name only:

Brewer also believes that Troy’s “impulse toward fatherhood, which results in children by three women, also ironically ensures his relative failure as a father in any of those families. He wants his sons to have more possibilities in life yet myopically curtails options” (par. 12). SCROLL

Here is how this source would appear as an entry on the Works Cited using the current 2019 MLA format. Generally, if you scroll to the bottom of the article within the database, the Works Cited entry will be included. However, please note if you copy and past the entry from the database into your Word document, the proper formatting will often be lost and you will need to edit it to follow MLA specifications.

Works Cited

Brewer, Gaylord. "Holy and Unholy Ghosts: The Legacy of the Father in the Plays of

August Wilson." Drama Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg and

Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 31, Gale, 2008. Gale Literature Resource

Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420082399/GLS?u=pgcc_main&sid=bookmar

k-GLS&xid=9dfa72cc. Accessed 22 July 2022. Originally published in Naming

the Father: Legacies, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern

and Contemporary Literature, edited by Eva Paulino Bueno, et al., Lexington

Books, 2000, pp. 120-139.

*Please pay special attention to punctuation throughout the entry as well as the use of quotation marks around article titles and italics used for original publication title as well as database. The entries are double-spaced. The second line of the entry (and any subsequent lines) are indented. The entire Works Cited will ultimately be alphabetized by author’s last name.