Breaking news! Even people who know the basics of MLA referencing struggle with an unusual source type, such as a newspaper article. Crucial marks lost on essays as a result.
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OK, that’s not actually news. Referencing sources has been tricky since the first time someone asked ‘where did you get this information?’ But worry not: we’re here to help.
In-Text Citations
If you’re citing a print article, MLA citations should include the name of the author and a page number (or page range if citing multiple pages). Keep in mind, though, that some newspapers use a letter + number style for page numbers. As such, a citation would look like this:
The festival was ‘a brilliant gathering of local and international writers’ (Romei C6).
Of course, you can also get your news online, and the internet doesn’t have page numbers. In this case, you only need to cite the author’s name:
Harrington is quoted warning that ‘not all stores’ will withstand the competition (Cummins).
The ‘Works Cited’ List
Full publication detail for cited sources is given in a ‘Works Cited’ list at the end of your document. The basic format for a print newspaper article here is:
Surname, First Name. ‘Title of Article’. Title of Newspaper, Day Month and Year of Publication, page number(s).
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For example, you would list the article cited in the first example above as:
Romei, Stephen. ‘Awful Apostrophes and Other Grammatical Gangsters’. The Australian, 10 June 2017, pp. C5-C6.
For online newspaper articles, meanwhile, the basic ‘Works Cited’ list format is the same except for giving a URL in place of page numbers:
Surname, First Name. ‘Title of Article’. Title of Newspaper, Day Month and Year of Publication, URL.
In practice, then, the entry for an online article would look something like this:
Cummins, Carolyn. ‘Amazon in Australia: Internet Giant Will Be a Friend and a Foe, Retailers Warn’. The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 2017, http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/amazon-will-be-a-friend-and-a-foe-retailers-warn-20170608-gwndy5.html.
And with that, you should be set to start citing newspapers! Good luck!