A Guide to MLA Documentation

by Joseph F. Trimmer

Briefer, cheaper, and easier to use than the MLA's own handbook, A Guide to MLA Documentation includes numerous examples, a new student paper, an APA index with the 2001 updates, helpful hints on such topics as taking notes and avoiding plagiarism, and the 2003 MLA Guidelines.

Genres: Reference, Writing, Nonfiction

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Skip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between high school and college, I wound up with any number of books on how to write and format things according to MLA guidelines... and frankly this slim volume was the most concise and among the easiest to understand. Sometimes, you need comprehensible over comprehensive. This book is absolutely perfect for that. Did it have everything I needed when I took it to college? No, but other manuals did, so I'd use this as my first line of defense and then refer to them if my formatting question couldn't be answered here. This is good for broad strokes but there were definitely gaps that I filled in for my own use (for example, I don't think it'd take much to print out a few pages of notes to keep it up-to-date for citing even more electronic sources). Later on I had to learn APA style anyhow, so this little book did an adequate job of carrying me through until then.

[Michael Willis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I purchased it because some dipshit professor required it and required us to bring it to class everyday. He would randomly do checks to make sure you had it, and if you didn't you would lose participation points for the day.

In that sense, it was 'worth' it if only to appease hia bizarre draconic bureaucratic nonsense.

Otherwise, just buy the current official MLA handbook on the MLA website. It's not expensive and is the authoritative source for MLA style as they are literally the people who write and publish the style. It's a absolutely idiotic to purchase literally any other MLA style guidebook.

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a quick and easy "cheat book" that lays out the fundamentals of MLA documentation without the bulkiness that similar books have. A must for English majors and other college students alike. MLA is one of the preferred types of documentation in addition to APA, and I highly recommend this guide for a quick reference, especially when writing English papers or just reviewing the works of another author.