Works Cited Help

If you have a paragraph such as this one:

Throughout the past 12 years, the New York Yankees have gone through many changes. Perhaps the most significant of which was signing Joe Torre to be their manager after the botched 1995 playoffs run. (Olney 8) Then again, it can also be argued that taking Jeter as the 6th pick in the 1992 MLB Amateur draft was the most successful contribution to the Yankees playoff run. (Olney 38) Since Jeter was the only member of the 1998 championship Yankees, it was clear to see that his leadership led the team to greatness. (Yankees) Nevertheless, by 2007, the Yankees were clearly a team without a centralized ideal of what it meant to be a Yankee. (Yankees) Nevertheless, the same core identities that made Posada, Rivera, Jeter, and Martinez real Yankees in 1999 will continue to show in the youth of Chamberlain, Cano, Kennedy, Cabrera, and Hughes. (Olney)

You will find that there are several issues with the paragraph.

One, the first 2 Buster Olney citations (both made up for the purpose of this post) are from the same book. You would not need Olney before Olney 38 since you have Olney 8. It is automatically assumed that you are citing from Olney if you have 2 citations in a row. However, with the last citation being from Buster Olney's website, you would have to revert all of these back to the first important word of the title.

On the Works Cited page, you would also have --- for the author's name (in this case Olney) in the 2nd citation (but make sure he's there in the first!).

You would also not have 2 (Yankees) citations in a row. It would be obvious that all things up to the 2nd (Yankees) would be from that citation.

All of these rules are to save space and ink and cost (really!!).

Keep in mind, the only time you need a citation is if you're taking someone's opinion or factual information.

If you establish a fact such as THROUGHOUT HISTORY, A CERTAIN TYPE OF PLAYER PLAYED FOR THE YANKEES. THESE WERE ALWAYS CLEANCUT PLAYERS THAT WORKED HARD FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE TEAM. PLAYERS SUCH AS REGGIE JACKSON, WHO FOR AS GOOD AS HE WAS ENDED UP CAST OFF FOR HIS SELFISHNESS AND EGO, REPRESENT THOSE PLAYERS WHO COULD HAVE BEEN YANKEES BUT DIDN'T LIVE UP TO THE CENTRAL IDEA OF TEAM.

THEN... you could create your own opinions about such drains on the Yankees as Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreau, Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Kevin Brown, and Alex Rodriguez. You would be free to talk about big salaries and love of individual stats over championships. You would also be able to talk about Damon being more about his long hair and idiot personality in Boston days than his throwing arm. You could also talk about the white collar attitude that helped Giambi and his tattoos and long hair succeed in Oakland (a place where steroids were part of the daily routine, or so it seems) and how he lost his powers (like Sampson), when he was forced to shave and cut his hair.

If you went back and talked about the history of Don Mattingly being told to cut his hair (a situation parodied in the Simpsons baseball episode), then you would need to quote where you got that info.

Another problem students usually have with citations is that they cite every line. Every line doesn't have to be cited - only if it is a fact or someone else's opinion. If the whole thing is paraphrased from the same website (Gammons) for example, you could have one Gammons at the end and get away with it.

You can only have one page from a book (Caple 8). You can't say (Caple 8, 14, 39). You also can't have (Caple 8) (Gammons) back to back. Label each site's exact quote location. If they both say the same thing ("If Dave Winfield was Mr. May, then surely, Alex Rodriguez is Mr. April") then choose one guy's quote and end it there.

If you remember reading something in a book, say Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die in Peace, and you don't know what page, search it out with Google. If you know someone else doing the topic, fall back to their knowledge or mine. Usually, a solid Google search will help you find anything. If you're obviously quoting from Simmons and you don't have a page, it would technically be plagiarism. Sometimes, we forget citations - that's a dumb learning mistake. However, when we forget to label multiple citations, that becomes a problem of laziness and plagiarism.

When in doubt, find a new citation.

Any more questions, please contact me.

Don't even think about putting URLs in the citations. See the previous MLA handout for more details!!!