Contributor: Melissa Kowalski. Lesson ID: 11886
You've written your paper in MLA style, including in-text citations. Have fun finding them when you need them! For the reader's sake, learn to compile a Works Cited page for easy reference and credit!
Some say nothing is original. In an essay, that is partially true. You got your information from somewhere, and it's only right and fair to give credit to those sources.
You've made it to the end of your essay.
You've written the final word in the last paragraph and put a period at the end of the last sentence.
If you used research in your paper and are writing in the MLA format, the answer is, "No!"
You still have to add the Works Cited page to your essay. The Works Cited page is the final page of an essay that contains in-text citations. The Works Cited page includes the full citations of the sources cited in the text of the essay.
In the five-part MLA In-text Citations series, found in Additional Resources in the right-hand sidebar, you learned how to cite sources in your paper using parenthetical citations for the sources' information.
In this series, MLA Works Cited Page, found in the Related Lessons in the right-hand sidebar, you will learn how to set up this page and write citations for different types of sources.
The Works Cited page follows the final page of the essay. On a correctly formatted Works Cited page:
You can find these formatting requirements listed on the MLA Works Cited Page: Basic Format webpage, courtesy of the Writing Lab and the OWL at Purdue. The OWL is the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University, which is considered one of the most respected student writing centers in the United States. The OWL has information on both the MLA and APA citation formats, as well as general writing information and grammar exercises.
To see the creation of an MLA Works Cited page, watch MLA 2016 Basic Format of Works Cited Page by ProfessorAllenNPCC.
This video (below) shows a correctly-formatted Works Cited page and provides useful tips on how use shortcuts in MS Word to double-space citations and create the hanging indent for citations longer than one line. You may want to take notes for yourself if you are not familiar with these features in MS Word and you use this program for writing:
Move on to the Got It? section to practice these formatting skills.