These are good sites to find primary texts (sacred writings) as well as statements of faith of various religions.

Citing Your Sources -- Two Steps

According to the MLA format, when you are citing a source in your paper, you should do two things: 1) cite the source -- usually with parentheses -- in the text of the paper and 2) provide an entry in the Works Cited page that describes that source.  Not following these two steps to cite all sources used in your paper could lead to plagiarism, so using the MLA citation format is extremely important.

Step 1: In most cases, citing the source in the text of your paper is fulfilled by putting the author's last name and then the page number(s) of your quote, paraphrase, or summary immediately after you use the source.  For example, if you quoted from page 174 of a book by Rachel Smith, the in-text citation would look something like this: "[quoted passage]" (Smith 174).  (Note: No comma or abbreviation is used between the author name and the page number, and the period does not go inside the quotation marks but should follow the closing parenthesis.)  You may run into cases where this simple format might not apply so simply; in that case, you should refer to the either your writing handbook, a copy of the current MLA style book, or any of the online resources below.

Step 2: When creating an entry for the Works Cited page, you must consider what kind of source you are working with because MLA provides a different format for various source types.  It is likely that most of your sources will be from an online database that you accessed through the library website; still, it is important to realize that you should always identify the type of source you are citing, look up the format for that source according to MLA, and follow it exactly, carefully considering the order, punctuation, capitalization, font, etc., in the guide.

As mentioned above, you can always use your writing handbook or the current MLA stylebook to look up the format.  Below, though, are a few quick electronic resources that might also help you in using MLA to cite your sources correctly:

The EasyBib MLA7 Reference Guide

The Honolulu Community College MLA Citation Examples

The Purdue OWL MLA Formatting and Style Guide

General Guidelines for Creating the Works Cited Page

When setting up your Works Cited page, please remember to follow the general guidelines for formatting the page:

• The phrase "Works Cited" should be centered at the top.
• A consistent font size, style, and color should be used throughout the document.
• One-inch margins should be used throughout the document.
• All entries should appear in alphabetical order.
• Each entry should use hanging indentation (the first line "hangs" all the way to the left margin while any additional lines in that entry are indented).
• The entire document should be double-spaced.

If you come across any websites in your research that you think would be helpful on this page, please let me know.