A good essay worthy of the highest grade is not only easy readability and quality argumentation, but also a large number of reliable sources, which the author has studied before writing his own text. Find how to do a work cited page for an essay.
The Work Cited Page is exactly the page where all these sources are listed, along with the authors, years of publication, etc. This list takes almost as much time to complete as writing the entire essay. It is so because to format it you should listen to certain rules in one of the styles. How to do it quickly, qualitatively, and not to fail, say the experts of the top service for writing fast academic works DoMyEssay.
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How the Work Cited Page Different from the Bibliography
Although these words are sometimes used as synonyms, in a strict academic sense, the Work Cited Page and the bibliography are not the same. The main difference is that in the first case, you specify only the sources that you refer to in the body of the text, and in the second case, everything that you have learned while writing an essay.
That is, for example, if for your essays you read some manuscript, it helped you, but in the end, in the text, you do not say anywhere directly “as said by some author in such a manuscript” or “this manuscript is written”, then you should not include it in the Work Cited Page.
How to Format Work Cited Page
When you write the Work Cited Page, your main weapon is the official formatting style guide, which is specified in the requirements for your essay. If this requirement is not specified anywhere, be sure to check it with your teacher, because rewriting the Work Cited Page is a tedious task.
Although formatting can be in any academic style (Harvard, for example), in the vast majority of cases, colleges require a Work Cited Page formatted in the MLA style.
MLA stands for Modern Language Association. It was developed by the Association of the same name many years ago, so the style has changed since its creation. The last update (for 2020) of MLA was in 2016. You can follow the relevance of the style on its official website.
The main printed source of MLA rules is the MLA Handbook. If you use it, check the year of publication so that it is the latest version of the guide. The official online formatting helper in this style is the website of The MLA Style Center. On this website you can find it:
- formatting instructions;
- useful services and tools;
- examples of properly designed works;
- expert chats.
Suppose your college or university requires formatting in a different style than MLA. In that case, you can easily find similar guides and services on their official websites to simplify the process of writing a Work Cited Page. Here we provide general rules for formatting the Work Cited Page in the MLA style.
The Most Important Rules of MLA Style
- The Work Cited Page is a separate page. So please start writing your list with a new blank page.
- Specify the sources at the very end of your essay. So number this page depending on how many pages of text you have written.
- Sign the Work Cited Page on the first line in the center. Place the rest of the text on the left side of the page.
- Don’t forget to specify the source author, the name of the source, where and when it was published, as well as from which pages of the source you took the information referred to in the text. Capitalize the name of the source (all capitalized words).
- All the sources you took online (even if they are printed too) should be made as electronic – with the online database where the source is located. The interesting thing is that “http://” should be deleted before the URL-address.
We didn’t give specific indentation numbers and intervals in this list, but these rules are also a requirement of MLA style and are written in the official guide to it.
Where Find Examples of Correct Formatting Work Cited Page
As we mentioned above, two official guide manuals are produced for MLA style, in printed form and online. In both of them, you can find formatting examples from specific sources. For other styles, you can also find official examples. Look for them on websites. You can ask your instructor for examples of good Work Cited Page in the style you need, or search the website of your college or university.
Another way to search for examples is, of course, the Internet. But keep in mind that not all websites are reliable, so not every source you should trust. How do you know if the source is good? Find out who its author is. For example, if you take samples from a top academic writing service, you won’t be mistaken. Experts of such sites have the appropriate education and extensive experience.
An important point: managers of essay writing services show examples of formatting in different styles, so always specify which style is used in a particular style. But for the topicality, you can not worry: the administration of the top websites carefully monitors this and regularly updates samples, especially if there is news about updating the formatting style rules.
