NOTES - Research: Documentation

Essential Materials
The Academic Center has provided the essentials of documentation on its
website. Go to UHVs website, hit Academic Center, then Handouts/Workshops, then
Writing Guides and Tips, and then Research and Citing. There you will find links to
the APA Quick Reference Guide and to the MLA Quick Reference Guide. Go to the
one your major uses and print it. In this course, only English and History majors
will use the MLA Quick Reference Guide. All other majors will use the APA
Quick Reference Guide. While you are in the Academic Centers section on
documentation, I also strongly recommend that you listen to the audio presentation on
MLA or APA documentation, depending on your major. The audios provide excellent
introductions to MLA and APA style and give lots of the information I give in this
unit, often more clearly than I do. (They are under Workshops and then Online
Workshops.)
I will assume in these notes that you have copies of the correct Quick Reference
Guide (hereafter called the APA Guide or the MLA Guide) for your major and that
you have listened to the audio.
Introduction to Documentation
In my experience students do worse on documenting research papers than on any
other thing in this course. I dont really understand that because documenting
properly is largely a matter of following rules and doesnt require much thinking. You
can avoid troubles with documentation by paying close attention to this set of notes
and the reference guides from the Academic Center that go with them.
Before we get to the how-tos of documenting, lets begin with the big picture. There
are many style sheets in the world for documenting sources. Most of them are
associated with a professional organization or major publishing house. At UHV,
however, with the exception of a couple of professors, we use only two style
sheets. The first of these you almost surely already know. It is called MLA style (the
acronym for the Modern Language Association, that is, the largest professional group
of English, foreign language, and linguistics professors). The other is called APA
style (the acronym for the American Psychological Association, that is, the largest
professional group for American psychologists).

Both of these style sheets use the philosophy of parenthetical citation. That
philosophy means that we dont use footnotes or endnotes to document. Instead,
documenting sources includes (1) parenthetically citing the source of any outside
information that has been incorporated into the paper and then (2) giving a full
bibliographic entry for that source on a list at the end of the paper. So, for every
quote, paraphrase, and summary there is (1) a parenthesis in the sentence in the paper
in which the information from the source first appears and (2) a corresponding entry
on the Works Cited or References list at the end of the paper giving full publication
information about that source.
In my grading, I will check every parenthetical citation in the body of your paper
against the References list or list of Works Cited at the end to see if there is a
corresponding entry. For every parenthesis there should be an entry on the
References list or list of Works Cited, and for every entry on the final list there
should be at least one parenthesis in the body of the paper (and more than one, if
you use the same source multiple times).
The parenthesis occurs right in the sentence in your paper in which the source is first
used. The parenthesis gives minimal information, most of it designed to allow the
reader to identify that same source in the References list (APA) or list of Works Cited
(MLA) at the end where fuller information on the source appears.
Again, English and History majors are to use the MLA Guide (though they are free to
use APA if they want to), while all other majors are to use the APA Guide. If you are
one of those many students who are already familiar with MLA and dont see the need
to learn APA, I can only say that your profession doesnt use MLA. In reality, MLA
is famous mostly because it is used in freshman composition. But few professions
care about it. APA is far more commonly used among professionals; it is the style
sheet most social scientists, educators, and business professionals use.
Although there are several major differences between MLA style and APA style, the
biggest one is that MLA privileges page numbers, while APA privileges dates. Every
source in MLA has a parenthesis with the minimum of a page number in it. Every
source in APA has a parenthesis with the minimum of a date in it. This difference
shows a difference in the mentality of the two types of professionals. English
professors care about page numbers because exact words matter to them and they
want their readers to find the exact words on a page. Those who use APA almost
never care about the exact words of the source. They care about ideas, as we have
seen in our discussion of incorporation, and so they use summary, not quotation, as
their main method of incorporating material from their sources. Page numbers matter

less than the age of the information. The more recent the information, the
better. Hence, APA focuses on dates.
I should point out that both APA and MLA have full books giving their
documentation styles in great detail, literally hundreds of pages. But these books are
expensive, so we dont ask you to buy them. Thats why we ask you instead to use
condensed versions of these style sheets provided by the Academic Center. If,
however, you run into a case in which the MLA or APA Guide on the Academic
Center website doesnt help you (for example, documenting a movie or TV show), we
have the full books in the Academic Center, and the tutors can answer your questions.
Both the APA and MLA Guides have four kinds of information:
1.
2.
3.
4.

The overall format of a paper

The procedures for putting parenthetical citations in the paper
The format for the References (APA) or list of Works Cited (MLA)
The procedures for typographically setting quotations in the text
In your research paper, you will be responsible for following all four parts of the
Guide you are using. That means that you need to format the whole paper, the
parenthetical citations, the References list or list of Works Cited, and whatever
quotations you have as the APA or MLA Guide says you are supposed to format
them.
Before I go through the MLA Guide for those of you in English and History, and then
the APA Guide for those of you in all other majors, let me spend some time on two
things common to all types of documentation and formatting.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a generic term for several types of behavior that schools and society at
large define as unethical and, in some cases, illegal. The worst kind of plagiarism
occurs when writers take a whole paper, a major section of a paper, or even only one
sentence from a source and simply include it in their papers word-for-word without
giving their readers any indication that it is the work of someone else, not their
own. This type of plagiarism could earn you an F in a UHV course for the first
offense and suspension from the university for the second offense. You would be
surprised to know how easy it is for experienced professors to find this kind of
plagiarism. Using good internet search tools, on several occasions I have found the
original texts that students have plagiarized in less than one minute.

Of course, there is another type of intentional plagiarism, buying a paper or paying

someone to write a paper for you. Again, the common response is failure for the
course.
More common is what we sometimes call unintentional plagiarism. It occurs when
students fail to provide adequate documentation in their papers. Everything that
comes from outside sources needs to be documented, quotes, paraphrases,
summaries, statistics, graphs, etc. Because many professors dont care to judge
students intentions, the sanctions for unintentional plagiarism are often the same as
for the intentional type. So please be sure you document everything that isnt
originally yours in every one of your papers.
I will not let you out of this course until you have shown me that you know what
documentation on your research paper is. Thats the one time that I will ask students
to rewrite a paper in this class, to fix their documentation on the research paper. But
because we are learning how to document, I wont fail you for doing it wrong. I will
merely ask you to do it again.
Running Heads
Creating running heads is a technical matter that sometimes confuses students who are
not used to writing research papers. A running head (or header, depending on your
word processing package) consists of the most important word or two from your
complete title in APA or simply your last name in MLA, and it appears at the top right
of every page of your paper, just before the page number. You dont type it onto
every page, of course. Use your word-processing package to create the running head,
and your computer will automatically insert it on every page. If you cant figure out
how to do it, contact the tutors or one of the A&S WebCT technicians. All of them
can help you.
MLA (for English and History Majors Only)
1. Overall Paper Format
For those of you using MLA, the overall paper format is easy.
Everything is double-spaced. Theres no separate title page or abstract page. So the
paper has only two parts, the text and the list of Works Cited. The first page of the
text, which includes your name, my name, the class number, and the date (all at the
left margin at the top) and then the full title of the paper centered. The running head

uses your last name, and all pages get page numbers. The last page of the paper is the
list of works cited, with the words Works Cited centered in the middle. Thats it.
2. Procedures for Putting Parenthetical Citations in the Paper
As I mentioned above, parenthetical citation in MLA is all about author names and
page numbers. But if you do as my rules for quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing
suggest and put the name of the sources author right into your sentence (for example,
in a phrase like According to Perez), then you really dont have to worry about
putting the author inside the parenthesis. You have already identified him or her. If
you are writing a paraphrase or summary, you also dont have to worry
about where to put the parenthesis. It goes right after the authors name and includes
the number of the page or pages in the source where you found the material you are
incorporating. If you are quoting, the parenthesis goes right after the quote. See
below.
It doesnt matter if you are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing, you need page
numbers in parentheses for all three. So, for example, if you are summarizing a
paragraph from page 3 of Perez, the parenthetical citation goes like this:
According to Perez (3), ADHD occurs in one out of every eleven boys from 8 to 11
years of age.
Notice that the name Perez is already in my sentence, so the parenthesis can follow
it immediately and include only the number of the page. Thats the key to
parenthetical citation in MLA: put the name of the source in the sentence and the
parenthesis with the page number right behind it (unless it is a quote: then it follows
the quote). All the examples in the MLA Guide show more complex cases, but this is
the basic idea.
One of the trickiest things in this course concerns the issue of a paraphrase or
summary that goes on for several sentences within your paragraph. The questions are-how many times do you parenthetically cite the original, and where do you cite
it. The where question is easy. You cite it in the first sentence of the paraphrase or
summary. The how-many question is harder. The general rule of thumb is this: you
only need to cite a paraphrase or summary once, no matter how many sentences it
runs. If, however, you quote, paraphrase, or summarize that same source in a later
paragraph of your paper, you need to cite it again.
3. The Format for Works Cited Pages

The MLA Guide gives the format for Works Cited lists on pp. 10-11. But that
discussion may require elaboration. Here are some rules, all of which are given in the
audio on MLA documentation:

At the top of the page, put Works Cited in the center, with no special type or font
size, just the words.

Double space throughout, both after Works Cited and within and between entries.

Put entries on the list in alphabetical order by the last name of the author.

Within each entry, the order of information items needed is as follows: authors last
name, then first name, the title of book or article, publication information, date, and,
for articles, page numbers.

At the end of each example in the guide, in bold letters it says what kind of source it
is. Obviously, you dont have to say that in your list. Thats to help students identify
different kinds of entries.

The first line of each entry starts at the left margin. All other lines in the entry are
indented, just tab them over.
Much as I like the Academic Centers MLA guide, maybe your life would be simpler
if I were to give you a simple example of the basic four types of entries on a Works
Cited list. So here they are:
Scholarly Article:
Example:
Babcock, Eleanor D. Blaming the Female: Social Commentary in 20th Century
Literature. Journal of Womens Studies 17 (1998): 482-507. Print.
Comments: We have the authors name (last name first), the title of the article, the
title of the journal in which the article is found, the volume number of the journal, the
year, and the page numbers of the article. Watch your punctuation: comma after last
name, period after first name or initial, period after journal title, colon after
parenthesis with date, and period at the end.

The only trick here is the volume number. Most students dont know the difference
between the volume number and the issue number of a scholarly journal. Most of the
time the volume number is assigned by year. That is, all issues in the same year have
the same volume number. As a result, usually you can tell how long the journal has
been around by the volume number. The journal in the example, the Journal of
Womens Studies, was 17 years old in 1998. In contrast, issue numbers are assigned
to every issue, that is, every time the journal comes out. Most scholarly journals come
out about four times a year, usually one issue per season. Issue 1 is often winter or
December, issue 2 is spring or March, issue 3 is summer or June, and issue 4 is
autumn or September. Each one of these issues gets an issue number. Usually, issue
numbers are not given in the Works Cited entry because the editors run only one set of
page numbers through all the issues for the whole year (what we call continuous
pagination). So issue 2 would start with page 253 if issue 1 ended with page
252. With continuous pagination, the volume and page numbers are all the reader
needs to find the article. (In contrast, some scholarly journals and almost all popular
journals start each issue with page 1. If they do that, you need to put the issue number
behind the volume number in the entry, for example, 17.3, where 17 is the volume
number and 3 is the issue number.)
Book
Example:
Quiroz, Anthony. Claiming Citizenship: Mexican Americans in Victoria, Texas.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Print.
Notice that the entry is quite simple: last name of author first, then first name, title of
book underlined, city of publisher, name of publisher, and date of publication. The
punctuation is easy: comma after last name, period after first name or initial, period
after title, colon after city, comma after publisher, and period at the end.
Personal Interview
Example:
Klinker, David C. Personal interview. 3 Sept. 1999.
Comments: Interview entries on the list of Works Cited are simple. Start with the last
name of the person you interviewed, and then the first name. Then simply put

Personal interview and the date. Theres a period after the name, the phrase Personal
interview, and the date.
Scholarly Article Online
Example:
Butler, Jeri. Barriers to Adopting Technology in the Classroom. Education
Quarterly
25.3 (2008): 22-28. Project Muse. 3. Aug. 2008 http://www.educationq.edu.
Comments: Everything in this type of entry is the same as a print article entry would
be up through the page numbers. But after the print article entry would stop, the
online entry adds three things: the name of the database (if there is one, such as
Project Muse here), the date you found the article there (since things online come and
go), and the website at which you found it.
Only one trick. Sometimes, as you know, articles online dont have page numbers. In
that case, you count the pages it takes up online and put that in place of the page
numbers:
Education Quarterly, 25.3 (2008): 9 pp.
If the article isnt even divided into pages online at all, count paragraphs:
Education Quarterly, 25.3 (2008): 46 pars.
4. Procedures for Typographically Setting Quotes in the Text
On pages 6-7 of the MLA Quick Reference Guide there is a brief section about how to
set up quotes. This is really easy. There are two kinds of quotes: long ones and short
ones. Short ones (less than 3 lines of text) are placed in your paragraph just as your
own sentence would be, except they are in quotation marks. The parenthesis with the
page number of the quote goes between the end quotation mark and the
period. Heres a made-up example:
According to Perez, ADHD is common: More than one in every eleven school-aged
boys in the United States has ADHD (37).

Long quotes, more than three lines, dont get quotation marks at all. They are
indented from the left margin. In this case, the parenthesis with the quotation marks
goes outside the period. Heres a made-up example:
According to Perez, ADHD is common:
More than one in every eleven school-aged boys in the United States has
ADHD, and more than one girl in every sixteen also had the condition. It is
more commonly diagnosed among boys than among girls probably because in
general their behaviors are more noticeable. (37)

APA (For all Majors Other than English or History)

1. Overall Paper Format
For those of you using APA, the overall paper format is trickier than what MLA
requires. You need a title page, an abstract page, the text, and a page at the end called
References. Everything is double spaced, and every page has a running head and
page number.
The title page is odd. (See the Academic Center Guide) The most important part is
the middle. In the middle centered, on three separate lines, are the full title of the
paper, your name, and the name of the university. (Notice, there is no date, no
reference to the course, and no use of my name as instructor.) At the top left you need
to type in Running head in small letters and then a short title of your paper in all
caps. (This reason is that papers published in this format tell printers by means of this
line what to use as the running head of the paper when it goes to press.) You can use
whatever short title you put after Running head as the actual running head of your
paper, by the way.
The title page will look weird when completed because it will have the full title of
your paper in the middle and a shorter title at the top. It may look odd to you, but
thats the correct form.
The abstract page is also new to many of you. (See the Academic Centers APA
Guide on abstracts). Put the word Abstract in the center of the page at the top. It

has normal font size and is not bold or italic. Then write an abstract, that is, a
summary of your paper. For this class, dont write more than 4 sentences. The first
one should be the thesis of your research paper, and the next few sentences should be
the two or three main subpoints of your paper. Abstracts in APA style do not refer to
the paper. That is, they dont use sentences like This paper argues that ADHD is
more common than most people think. Instead, they give the ideas of your paper in
straightforward form: ADHD is more common than most people think. No I and
no this paper in the abstract.
The third page of a paper in APA style is the first page of the actual text. It has the
full title of the paper centered at the top. Then it just starts the introductory paragraph.
At the end is a separate page containing the reference list, with the single word
References centered in the middle.
2. Procedures for Putting Parenthetical Citations in the Paper
The APA Quick Reference Guide dedicates pages 2-6 (Section 1) to showing you how
to put the parenthetical citations in your paper. The most important thing to know is
that every time you quote, paraphrase, or summarize information from
a source, you need to insert a parenthesis with at least the date of publication of
the original text. If you have followed my rules for quoting, paraphrasing, and
summarizing, you know exactly where to put the parenthesis, namely, immediately
after the sources name in your sentence. If, however, you have decided not to follow
my rule for putting the name of the source of a quote, paraphrase, or summary into
your sentence, your parenthesis will need to include not only the date of publication
but also the authors name.
Extended Use of a Source: One of the trickiest things in this course concerns the issue
of a paraphrase or summary that goes on for several sentences within your
paragraph. The questions are--how many times do you cite the original, and where do
you cite it. The where question is easy. You cite it in the first sentence of the
paraphrase or summary. The how-many question is harder. The general rule of
thumb is this: you only need to cite a paraphrase or summary once, no matter how
many sentences it runs. If, however, you quote, paraphrase, or summarize that same
source in a later paragraph of your paper, you need to cite it again.
Interviews: To cite a personal interview with someone in APA, you use a very
different procedure from what you might have learned in MLA. For one thing,
personal interviews do not go in the References list at the end of the paper (as they do
in the Works Cited list in MLA). So the only citation of the interviewed source that

your reader is going to get is within the parenthesis you will provide. Notice that we
give the full date of the interview inside the parenthesis. And note too that we give
the first and last name of the interviewee and his or her title in the text so that the
reader knows who the person is. That is the only time we are allowed to use first
names in the body of the paper itself. All other times, it is last name only.
Sources within Sources: The only other type of parenthetical citation in APA that I
want to cover occurs when you are documenting a source that itself has used a
source.
Look at the example given in the Guide: According to Sampson, individuals tend to
vote the party supported by their ancestors (as cited in Povarick, 1996).
What this means is this: you as writer never read Sampson at all. You
read Povarick. But the information in the paraphrase originally came from Sampson,
and Povarick used it her paper just as you are now trying to use it your paper. So you
give credit to Sampson by putting his name in the sentence as the source, but you
cite Povarick in your parenthesis because thats the source you actually read. You
cant cite something you havent read because technically you dont even know
whether it exists. (Povarick may have made up Sampson, for all you know.) On the
References list as the end, by the way, Povarick is listed but Sampson is not.
Help! There are lots of other questions that may come up as you try to document your
sources by putting parenthetical citations in the body of your paper. Please, put
questions on the discussion board. I will answer them, and then all students can see
the question and answer.
3. The Format for the References Page

At the top of the page, put References in the center, with no special type or font
size, just the word.

Double space throughout, both after References and within and between entries.

Put entries on the list in alphabetical order by the last name of the author.

Within each entry, the order of information items needed is as follows: authors last
name, then initials of first and middle names (no full first or middle names), the
year of publication in parenthesis, the title of book or article, publication information,
and, for articles, page numbers.

At the end of each example in the guide, in bold letters it says what kind of source it
is. Obviously, you shouldnt say that in your list. Thats to help students identify
different kinds of entries as they read this set of examples.

The first line of each entry starts at the left margin. All other lines in the entry are
indented, just tab them over.

Capitalization within titles is the biggest problem for students in the References
list. The words E-learning in higher education form the title of the article that the
student read. Only the first letter of the title of a journal article is capitalized (unless
the word is normally capitalized, for example, American). The only exception
occurs when there is a subtitle, as there is in this example. Notice that the first word of
the subtitle, Some, is also capitalized, but none of the rest of the words in the
subtitle are. So the rule is that the first word of article titles and subtitles are
capitalized, and all other words in the title and subtitle arent. The same rule applies
for book titles in APA. All other capitalization in APA References lists is normal:
capital letters are used as one would expect in the titles of the journals themselves, and
of cities and publishers of books.

Knowing what to italicize is also complex. It is simplest to remember that on

references pages only three things get italicized: titles of books, titles of journals and
other forms of periodicals (magazines and newspapers), and the volume number of a
journal article. That last thing is weird. But notice the Ellis, Ginns, Piggott example
on p. 12 again. Not only is the title of the journal italicized but the 28, which is the
volume number, is also italicized. Issue number and page numbers are not italicized,
only volume numbers.
Now I would like to do what I did above for the MLA style users, namely, give you
very simple examples of the most common type of entry on the References
list. Remember, if you interview somebody, you have a parenthetical citation in the
body of the paper but no entry on the reference list at the end (as MLA does). Thats
because the APA style only puts published materials on its lists at the end, and
personal interviews arent published.
Scholarly Article
Example:
Braden, J. C., & Darly, A. R. (1997). The power of hypnotic suggestion.
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 74, 862-893.

Comments: Braden comes before Darly in the entry not because B comes before D
but because in the original article his name came first. We always use the same
order of authors found in the original article or book because the first authors
did more of the work. Also regarding author names, there are no first or middle
names, just initials. There is no and between authors but an ampersand, &. The
date is in parenthesis and is followed by a period. The title of the article is small case
except for the first word. It is followed by a period. The title of the journal in which
the article appeared has normal capitalization and is followed by a comma. The
volume number comes next, followed by a comma, the page numbers, and a final
period. Notice that the volume number is italicized, as is the journal title.
One thing to watch here is the volume number. Most students dont know the
difference between the volume number and the issue number of a scholarly
journal. Most of the time the volume number is assigned by year. That is, all issues
in the same year have the same volume number. As a result, usually you can tell how
long the journal has been around by the volume number. So, for example, the journal
in the example above was in its 28th year in 2009. In contrast, issue numbers are
assigned to every issue, that is, every time the journal comes out. Most scholarly
journals come out about four times a year, usually one issue person season. Issue 1 is
often winter or December, issue 2 is spring or March, issue 3 is summer or June, and
issue 4 is autumn or September. Each one of these issues gets an issue
number. Usually, issue numbers are not given in the References entry because the
editors run only one set of page numbers through all the issues for the whole year
(what we call continuous pagination). So issue 2 would start with page 253 if issue 1
ended with page 252. With continuous pagination, the volume and page numbers are
all the reader needs to find the article. (In contrast, some scholarly journals and
almost all popular journals start each issue with page 1. If they do that, you need to
put the issue number behind the volume number in the entry. See the first two entries
on p. 12.)
Scholarly Book
Example:
Quiroz, A. (2005). Claiming citizenship: Mexican Americans in Victoria, Texas.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Comments: Anthony Quiroz is a grad of UHV, and this is a real book he has
authored. Notice that we only use the initial of his first name, that the date

immediately follows the name, and that a period follows the parenthesis with the
date. The book title is italicized, and only the first word of the title and subtitle and
normally capitalized words are capitalized. The word citizenship is not. Everything
else is straightforward.
Scholarly Article Online
Example:
Colden, A. P. (2000). Medicine vs. hypnosis. Journal of American Medical Studies,
12,1-17. Retrieved from http://www.jams.org/medicinevhypnosis.html.
Comments: Notice that the entry is exactly like a regular scholarly article entry, but
with the web address of the article. Sometimes you will also see the date that the
website was accessed because websites change their material frequently and the web
address so your readers can find the article online if it is still there.
Theres one trick. Sometimes, as you know, articles online dont have page
numbers. In that case, you count the pages it takes up online and put that in place of
the page numbers:
Education Quarterly, 25 (2008): 9 pp.
If the article isnt even divided into pages online at all, count paragraphs:
Education Quarterly, 25 (2008): 46 pars.
4. Procedures for Typographically Setting Quotes in the Text
The thing to remember is that for every quote in an APA paper there are two
parentheses, the first located before the quote and giving the date of the source and the
second located after the quote and giving the page number(s). In APA, only
quotations get a page-number parenthesis.
There are two kinds of quotes: long ones and short ones. Short ones (less than 3 lines
of text) are placed in your paragraph just as your own sentence would be, except they
are in quotation marks. The date parenthesis goes after the authors name, and the
page-number parenthesis goes between the end quotation mark and the period. Heres
a made-up example:

According to Perez (2008), ADHD is common: More than one in every eleven
boys in the United States has ADHD (p. 37).
Long quotes, more than three lines, dont get quotation marks at all. They are
indented from the left margin. In this case, the parenthesis with the quotation marks
goes outside the period. Heres a made-up example:
According to Perez (2008), ADHD is common:
More than one in every eleven school-aged boys in the United States has
ADHD, and more than one girl in every sixteen also had the condition. It is
more commonly diagnosed among boys than among girls probably because in
general their behaviors are more noticeable. (p. 37)