In academic writing, several formatting styles are followed. Each institute has set its requirements which are to be followed by the students while writing academic assignments and thesis. The use of a format allows setting a standard across the institute. There are several formatting styles like APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Turabian, AMA, etc. Different universities and institutes have defined different formatting styles to be used. For example, in the United Kingdom (UK), the Harvard style is usually followed in most universities. In law schools, normally Chicago style is preferred. Psychology departments prefer the APA style. However, the use of each format can also be implemented in any academic department. In the USA, some universities follow APA, some follow MLA, and some follow others.
MLA stands for Modern Language Association and is being used all over the world for technical and scientific writing. MLA style has its distinct formatting style which is going to be the topic of this blog. The formatting is not a difficult task but you can also avail me of the service of a professional essay writer to write my essay for me. While writing an academic document, the author needs to mention the sources from where the information or data has been taken. It is ethical and obligatory to mention citation, otherwise, it will be regarded as property theft and it is an unethical practice. Therefore, citing a source is an important practice in academic writing.
Even if you have paraphrased the original sentences, it still needs to be cited because the idea taken was originally someone else’s, not yours. Furthermore, if you are presenting an idea or expressing the results of your study, citing sources will strengthen your results and ideas, increasing the credibility of your studies. In academic writing, the sources cited while writing is known as in-text citations. The In-text citations in MLA are presented in parenthesis if the reference is given at the end of the sentence, before the period e.g. (Smith). If the instructor has also asked for the page numbers then they can be added just after the last name of the author e.g. (Smith 190).
In the second case, the in-text citation has to be given at the start of the middle of the sentence, it will not be given in the parenthesis e.g. “Smith elaborated that ….”. Similarly, if the page number has to be mentioned here, it will be added at the end of the sentence in the parenthesis e.g. “Smith elaborated that the resistance elicits from the plants' defense mechanism (190)”. This is how the in-text citations for single-author sources are given in the MLA format. You can ask an essay writer to write my essay.
Let’s say, you have two authors that need to be mentioned while writing, this can be done in the same way. For example, “Bob and Murray depicted the effects of global warming to be disastrous” (65). The other way when the source has to be cited at the end of the sentence could be written as “the effects of global warming are depicted as disastrous (Bob and Murray 65)”. Still in another case, if the source has 3 or more three authors, it can be given by adding “et al.” after the second name of the first author.
For instance, “Tahir et al. isolated many antagonistic microbes from potato soil (250).” Similarly, if it has to be written at the end of the sentence it can go like this “several antagonists were isolated from potato soil (Tahir et al. 250)”.
Finally, when you are done with citing the sources in the text through the assignment, then all these sources are to be mentioned at the end of the document as a list under the heading “Works Cited” in MLA. These headings can vary from format to format. The examples for single author source, two author source, and multiple author sources are given as:
Single author source:
Smith, Jones. “The study to enhance the motivation of people.” Journal of Psychology, 25.4 (2017): 189-195.
Two author sources:
Bob, David, and Rock Murray. “The impact of strategies for cognitive development.” Journal of Psychological Theory 36.2 (2016): 65-69.
For sources having three or more authors:
Tahir, Muhammad I., et al. “Isolation of microbes from potato soil.” Journal of Microbiology 12.5 (2020): 246-252.
A few years back, I always had a difficult time understanding and applying these formatting styles in the assignments. This usually took me hours to complete the document formatting manually. Whenever I had to write my essay, I always wanted to get away with this part of formatting the document. Most of the time I asked my friends to help me with this part, and thanks to my friends, they helped me a lot.
Now that years have passed and formatting the citations is not a problem anymore. Several software and applications have been developed that come in handy for performing this job. These applications have several formats built-in and you can just format the whole document in just a click. But we are going to share details about this software in some other blog.
Further, if you still find it difficult to format the assignments according to a specific format, you can always use the essay writing service as these services are quite good and can provide you with a document in any required format. I have also availed of these services for quite a time and I have had a really good experience with them. You can also hire these services that can save you a lot of time, but not money.
