ABSTRACT
The recommended documentation style for college papers varies among academic disciplines and instructors; however, the standard style for most English and other humanities courses is based on the Modern Language Association's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Instead of older, cumbersome styles of footnotes and bibliographies, the current MLA (modern language association) system uses streamlined, brief notes with page references in parentheses following citations, along with a "Works Cited" section at the end providing full bibliographical data. The MLA Handbook recommends spelling out the full name of months in students text but abbreviating those with more than four letters in students works cited section. In MLA style, all sources cited throughout the text are fully documented in a works cited section at the end. Sources are listed with last names first, in alphabetical order. Entries for which the author is not identified are alphabetized by title.
