MLA Handbook (Paperback)

Building confidence in the information and ideas we share with one an- other is perhaps more important today than ever before, and for nearly a century it has been the driving principle behind MLA style, a set of stan- dards for writing and documentation used by writers to find and evaluate information, alert their audience to the trustworthiness of their findings through citation, and shape the expression of their ideas in conversation with others. What we call "MLA style" has never been a static method, in- stead changing over time to meet the needs of writers. Its goals, however, have generally remained the same since the appearance of the first officially published edition (titled the MLA Style Sheet) in 1951: establishing uniform standards for documentation and cita- tion, encouraging the widespread adop- tion of those standards by writers, and instructing students. This edition carries forth those goals, updating and expand- ing the MLA's long-standing guidance on paper formatting, prose mechanics, quot- ing and paraphrasing, in-text references, and the list of works cited.