ENGL 1302 (English Composition II) - Dr. P. Henry

If you are a new college student, you may have written a Bibliography before, but a never a Works Cited page. You might be wondering, "What's the difference?" The biggest difference between a Bibliography and a Works Cited page is their contents. In a Works Cited page, you list every source that you have cited in your paper, whether by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing. If you borrowed someone's ideas or words in any part of your paper, you must include that source in your Works Cited page (and it must also have an in-text citation in the body of your essay).

In a Bibliography, you list every source you consulted at all stages of your research process, even if you didn't quote, paraphrase, or summarize it in your essay. Even if a source just gave you background information on your topic, you still include it in a Bibliography (but not a Works Cited page).

Read the information below to learn the basics of Works Cited pages. The information has been copied and adapted from the Purdue OWL, an excellent resource on citation. Visit their website for more information.

BASIC RULES

• Begin your Works Cited page on a separate page at the end of your essay.
• Label the page Works Cited. Do not italicize the words Works Cited or put them in quotation marks, and center them at the top of the page.
• Only the title Works Cited should be centered. The citation entries themselves should be aligned with the left margin.
• Double space all entries, but do not skip spaces between entries.
• Indent the second and subsequent lines of citations by 0.5 inches to create a hanging indent.
• List page numbers efficiently. If you refer to an article that appeared on pages 225 through 250, list the page numbers on your Works Cited page as pp. 225-50. You should omit the first set of repeated digits. So, pages 35 through 37 would be pp. 35-7. However, if the article appeared on pages 290 through 310, your entry must be pp. 290-310, because no digits are repeated. 
• Use p. if only one page of a print source is used, and pp. if two or more pages are used. Use a hyphen in a span of pages.
• If you're citing an article or publication that was originally issued in print form but that you retrieved from an online database, you should type the online database name in italics. 
• For online sources, you should include a location to show readers where you found the source. Many scholarly databases use a DOI (digital object identifier). Use a DOI in your citation if you can; otherwise use a URL. Delete http:// from URLs. The DOI or URL is usually the last element in a citation and should be followed by a period.
• All works cited entries end with a period. 

CAPITALIZATION & PUNCTUATION

Capitalize each word in the titles of articles, books, etc., but do not capitalize small words like articles (a, and, the), prepositions, or conjunctions unless one is the first word of the title or subtitle: Gone with the Wind, The Art of War, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

Use italics (not underlining!) for titles of larger works (books, magazines) and quotation marks for titles of shorter works (poems, articles).

AUTHOR NAMES

Works Cited entries are listed alphabetically by the author's last name (or, for entire edited collections, editor names). Author names are written with the last name first, then the first name, then the middle name or middle initial when needed:

Burke, Kenneth

Levy, David M.

Wallace, David Foster

Do not list titles (Dr., Sir, Saint, etc.) or degrees (PhD, MA, DDS, etc.) with names. A book listing an author named John Bigbrain, PhD should appear as Bigbrain, John. However, you do need to list suffixes like Jr. or II. So, a work by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be cited as King, Martin Luther, Jr. The suffix should follow the first or middle name and a comma.

MULTIPLE WORKS BY SAME AUTHOR

If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, list the entries alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the author's name for every entry after the first:

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. [...]

---. A Rhetoric of Motives. [...]

When an author or collection editor appears as both the sole author of a text and as the first author of a group, list solo-author etnries first:

Heller, Steven, ed. The Education of an E-Designer. [...]

Heller, Steven, and Karen Pomeroy. Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design.

WORK WITH UNKNOWN AUTHOR

Alphabetize works with no known author by their full title (you should a shortened version of the title in the in-text citations in  your paper. In this case, Boring Postcards USA has no known author:

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations. [...]

Boring Postcards USA. [...]

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. [...]