I am working on writing a paper. We have to use MLA format. I am a little confused on how to site my sources. I wrote the following paragragh:

Question

Panama Canal is an international waterway located across the Isthmus Panama. The Canal was built by the United States. Building started in 1904 and was completed in 1914,taking around 10 years to build. The purpose of the canal was to shorten the distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Before the canal was built the trip sailing from New York to San Francisco was approximately 8,000 miles longer then it is now. Today the Panama Canal is used to transport goods such as grains, automobiles, etc.

I got all of my information off a website but I didn't copy word for word. DO I need to site after every sentence or just at the end of the
paragraph?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The short answer to your question is YES, after every sentence in which you quoted or paraphrased someone else's words.

You need to have each source of information cited in TWO places:

1. the Works Cited page that is placed after the last page of your paper, and
2. in parentheses in the text of your paper, immediately after the quotation or paraphrase.

For example, this would go on the Works Cited page (with proper indentation for the second and following lines):

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, 1903. Project Bartleby. Ed. Steven van Leeuwen. Dec. 1995. Columbia U. 2 Dec. 2003
<www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/dubois/>.

... and this would go immediately after the quotation or whatever:
(Du Bois)

The information in parentheses in the text needs to be as brief as possible. That's why there's a Works Cited page – for all the details of the listing.

This is a good place for information on citing in MLA format:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

Use the list at the left as the table of contents. You can also see what a Works Cited page looks like by clicking on MLA Sample Works Cited Page in the left column.