MLA formatting of the actual paper is very simple, though as with any paper, professor preference overrides any official format rule. With one-inch margins all the way around, start at the top, aligned to the left, with your name, your instructor’s name, your class, and the due date of the paper. On the next line, type in a title, centered on the page, with all proper nouns and important words capitalized. The line below the title will be the first paragraph of your paper, indented. Everything should be uniformly double-spaced, including your Works Cited. Your instructor may want you to put your title in bold font.
Bibliographies are organized lists of sources and they serve 3 basic purposes. The first is that it reflects the quality and thoroughness of your sources. It also provides your reader with a way of tracking down and being able to read the original source material to learn more; by cross-referencing your in-text citations with your Works Cited, they can identify the source for a particular bit of information. Finally, it's to give credit where credit is due--in other words, to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is using someone else's ideas, research, or words without giving them credit, and it's a form of academic dishonesty. Researchers put in a lot of time, money, and hard work to create a study, implement it, write it up, and get it published--especially if it goes through peer-review. Providing citations is being fair and respectful of their work. And, of course, many professors--and often the college or university--will have severe consequences for plagiarism. At Marian campuses, you may not just receive no credit for the paper--you may fail the course automatically.
Citations are arranged alphabetically by the author's last name (use the first author listed if there's more than one) or by the title if there is no author, such as with many web pages. Getting the citations from library resources is usually easy enough; in virtually all databases and in the online catalog, you can look for the Cite button and copy/paste your citations from there. Like the rest of the paper, Works Cited pages should be uniformly double-spaced and should include hanging indents--the first line of each citation should be aligned to the left while all other lines are indented.
Your list of citations will tell your audience a lot about your paper without them even reading the first paragraph. By looking at a well-crafted Works Cited page, I can tell at a glance things like types of sources used, overall age of the sources, and even possibly whether you included any big-time researchers in the field. Here is Andy’s Works Cited for his cheetah amyloidosis paper; what can you tell from this list? (Hint: He’s done a lot of things right, but he could improve in at least one way.)
Works Cited
Caughey, Byron, and Gerald S Baron. “Are cheetahs on the run from prion-like amyloidosis?.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 105, no. 20, 2008, pp. 7113-114, doi:10.1073/pnas.0803438105.
“Killer Cheetah Disease Spread by Faeces.” New Scientist, vol. 198, no. 2656, May 2008, p. 19. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(08)61201-4.
Miller, Greg. “Could They All Be Prion Diseases?” Science, vol. 326, no. 5958, 2009, pp. 1337–39, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27736562. Accessed 2 May 2022.
Munson, L., et al. “Diseases of Captive Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) in South Africa: a 20-Year Retrospective Survey.” Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, vol. 30, no. 3, 1999, pp. 342-347.
Munson, Linda, et al. “Extrinsic Factors Significantly Affect Patterns of Disease in Free-Ranging and Captive Cheetah (Acinonyx Jubatus) Populations.” Journal of Wildlife Diseases, vol. 41, no. 3, July 2005, pp. 542–48. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.7589/0090-3558-41.3.542.
Murakami, T., Ishiguro, N., and K. Higuchi. “Transmission of Systemic AA Amyloidosis in Animals.” Veterinary Pathology, vol. 51, no. 2, 2014, pp.363-371, doi:10.1177/0300985813511128
“The Mystery of the Dying Cheetahs: Researchers Are Closing in on how a Version of Mad Cow Disease Is Decimating Captive Cheetah Populations.” Science, 12 May 2008, https://www.science.org/content/article/mystery-dying-cheetahs#:~:text=Researchers%20are%20closing%20in%20on,is%20decimating%20captive%20cheetah%
20populations&text=Although%20famously%20speedy%2C%20cheetahs%20can,and%20has%20frustrated
%20breeding%20efforts.
Papendick, R. E., Munston, L., O’Brien, T. D., and K. H. Johnson. “Systemic AA Amyloidosis in Captive Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus).” Veterinary Pathology, vol. 34, no. 6, 1997, pp. 549-556, doi:10.1177/030098589703400602.
Tatalovic, Mico. “The Mystery of the Dying Cheetahs.” Science Now, vol. 2008, no. 716, May 2008, p. 5. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=32133832&site=ehost-live.
When you include information from your sources in your paper, you need to cite which source you used for each bit of information. You may use information from more than one source in a paragraph, or even in a single sentence. In-text citation isn’t difficult, as long as you know where the information came from—and this is really where the active reading trick of taking notes comes in really handy, because you can create an in-text citation for MLA with just 2 pieces of information (3 at most): author, page number, and sometimes the title. Here’s how it works for a variety of common situations:
For an article by one person, use the author’s last name and the page number, like this:
Scientists have noted that prions can act like “seeds” with other proteins, spreading from cell to cell, and this may explain why certain neurodegenerative disorders spread from place to place along the entire nervous system (Miller 1337).
If you have two authors, use the last names of both before the page numbers:
Mice primed with silver nitrate, which causes inflammation, are more susceptible to AA amyloidosis; inflammatory diseases are common in the cases of captive cheetahs with AA amyloidosis, suggesting that inflammation may be a contributing factor to the disease (Caughey and Baron 7113).
It’s not uncommon for there to be three or more authors of a peer-reviewed article, so you can shorten your citation by using only the first author’s last name, followed by et al., which is a shortened form of the Latin phrase for “and others”:
Since 1992, however, cases of amyloidosis have increased both in prevalence and severity (Papendick et al. 549).
You can also work in the name of the author or authors into the paragraph, so all you would need to put in parentheses are the page numbers. Let’s use the last example and rephrase it a little:
Papendick et al. notes that since 1992, cases of amyloidosis have increased both in prevalence and severity (549).
Direct quotes always get citations after them, even if you’re surrounding it by information that comes from the same article. If you have 2 sources from the same author, like Andy does with Linda Munson, add the title in quotes between the author name and the page number:
Munson et al. notes that due to a lack of genetic diversity, scientists believe that cheetahs as a species are likely susceptible to infectious diseases, that they cultivate “persistent viral infections and develop atypical immune responses to common pathogens” (“Extrinsic” 542). However, they discovered that most cheetahs in North American zoos did not die from the typical pathogens but rather to chronic degenerative diseases, which included amyloidosis (Munson et al. “Extrinsic” 543).
There’s one other time when you’ll likely use the title, and that’s when there isn’t an author listed, like with web pages. Use a shortened form of the title instead of the author’s last name. You probably also won’t have page numbers, so your in-text citation will look like this:
Since the 1980s, amyloidosis kills about 70% of captive cheetahs (“The Mystery”).
You might find that two articles have information that works so well together, you combine the information from the two sources into one sentence. In this citation, both Munson and the web page “The Mystery of the Dying Cheetahs” talk about how abnormal proteins clump and build up in organs. Since this information came from both sources, both are cited, in alphabetical order:
This results in large clumps of abnormal proteins building up in organs like the liver and spleen; in captive cheetahs, kidneys are frequently attacked (Munson 344; “The Mystery”).
You may have to look up other possible scenarios online; Purdue OWL is an excellent source for MLA format guidance and assistance.
OK, let's put some stuff together so you can see how it flows. This is, of course, just a small sampling of the paper Andy would turn in, but it's enough to let you see how the finished product should look.
Andrew E. Student
Dr. Natalie Tucker
AGR 221: Animal Nutrition
October 15, 2022
Amyloid Protein (AA) Amyloidosis in Cheetahs: A Race Against Death
The American Zoo and Aquarium Association initiated in 1989 a pathology survey of cheetahs in captivity regarding amyloidosis, which impacted approximately 7% of captive cheetahs between 1989 and 1992. Since 1992, however, cases of amyloidosis have increased both in prevalence and severity (Papendick et al.549). Since the 1980s, amyloidosis kills about 70% of captive cheetahs ("The Mystery"). Munson et al. notes that due to a lack of genetic diversity, scientists believe that cheetahs as a species are likely susceptible to infectious diseases, that they cultivate "persistent viral infections and develop atypical immune responses to common pathogens" (Munson et al. "Extrinsic" 542). However, they discovered that most cheetahs in North American zoos did not die from the typical pathogens but rather to chronic degenerative diseases, which included amyloidosis (Munson et al. "Extrinsic" 543).
Amyloidosis is not caused by a virus, bacteria, or even protozoan, but rather from a natural process that goes awry. Proteins that fold abnormally can influence other proteins to do the same, in essence becoming "bad role models" for proteins that would otherwise fold normally (Miller 1337). This results in large clumps of abnormal proteins building up in organs like the liver and spleen; in captive cheetahs, kidneys are frequently under attack (Munson 344; "The Mystery").
Disturbingly, while looking at the possibility of the spread of amyloidosis from cheetahs to humans, the article by Murakami, Ishiguro, and Higuchi indicates that while humans are not likely to get amyloidosis from cheetahs, as we do not consume cheetahs or their feces, the risk of obtaining it from the food chain is not exactly negligible. There may be a risk regarding cattle and fowl--though it is less with chickens, since broilers tend to be slaughtered early and thus the prions responsible are less likely to have time to develop (367). Domestic waterfowl commonly showed amyloidosis, and AA amyloidosis fibrils showed up in duck and goose foie gras (Murakami et al. 364-365).