Mla Style Research Paper: Fill & Download for Free

I once caught a student plagiarizing a research paper. Since he was supposed to be a graduating senior, I let him do it over. I knew well enough that he didn't have time to write a decent paper, but I figured he might be able to manage enough to pass for the year and graduate. To my surprise, on the following Monday I opened Turn It In and found his paper there. It had a 0% similarity report. Clearly not plagiarized, but also not a research paper. I started reading, expecting it to be a kind of essay, but what I found looked in every way like an MLA-style research paper, complete with quotes, internal citations, and a works cited list at the end. I scrolled to his sources and found them formatted correctly with authors' names, publishers, etc. But no similarity index. I immediately set to work to identify his sources. Google did not return a single one of them. When I questioned the student about it, he hemmed and hawed a bit, but ultimately I got it out of him that he had fabricated the whole thing. Every quote, every page number, every author, every title — all of it a work of total fiction. I very grudgingly sent the young man to summer school, but if I'm being honest, I've never in my life been more impressed with someone's commitment to dishonesty.

When you write “X is true” or “X study says Y”, you’re making a claim of fact. There are (at least) three kinds of claims of fact in a research paper:commonly agreed-upon knowledge, such as “people generally want to survive.”knowledge that you acquired in your research: “Group A showed a marked increase in testosterone (Table 1).” This usually requires that you point to the table (“Table 1”) or chart in your report that shows this result.knowledge that someone else acquired in their research: “people want to survive due to their need for peanuts (Weatherbee, 2010).” The Weatherbee, 2010 reference in parentheses (brackets) is a citation. In this case, it’s an in-text citation. Weatherbee’s paper is a source; you cite that source by pointing to it with the citation.A citation is text that points to the author of a work from whom you have gathered information that you’ve included in your report.APA style: APA Formatting and Style GuideMLA style: MLA Formatting and Style GuideChicago (CMOS) style: Chicago Manual of Style 16th EditionImportant: I see websites that purport to create citations, but to me, they really create entries for a bibliography or reference list. Strictly speaking, these are not citations, but many websites call them that. In my example, you would have to include a proper listing of Weatherbee’s work (author, title, date, etc.) in the reference list. This is what the APA OWL has to say about the reference list: APA Formatting and Style Guide“Your reference list should appear at the end of your paper. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text.”In other words, citations (in the essay) and references (in the list at the end) travel in pairs: you need both.I hope that helps.

The MLA Style CenterThe MLA Style CenterWorks Cited: A Quick Guide. See how the template of ... Behind the Style. Find out the thinking behindMLA style and get opinions and tips from MLA editors.‎Works Cited: A Quick Guide · ‎Formatting a Research Paper · ‎Teaching Resources