Citing the ISE

All content on this site is suitable for citing in academic work. Friends of the ISE can access a formatted citation of each page from the Toolbox. 

Citing in MLA Style has become less complex and easier to follow with changes from the eighth edition. Now, all sources can be cited in a uniform way. If a citation element is unknown (e.g. the author), it can be omitted and the citation will begin with the next element on the list (e.g. title). Other changes to citation style include the replacement of periods with commas in the works cited entries, and the extension of abbreviations like "ed." to "edited by." The new MLA format for citing web pages is as follows:

• Author, if available (this will be indicated on the home page of the section, and is often cited on each page).
• Title of the source: page or work (self-contained sources such as plays should be italicized; sources within larger works such as poems or single pages should be in quotation marks. Sources such as introductions are neither italicized nor within quotation marks).
• Title of the container (the larger source that holds the source in question i.e. Internet Shakespeare Editions).
• Editor, translator, etc., if there are these options.
• Version (this would be used when citing whether the cited play was from a modern, folio, quarto, or octavo text).
• Number (issue numbers for Scene journals are examples of numbers).
• Publisher or sponsor of the site (University of Victoria).
• Date of publication (day, abbreviated month, year, as available).
• Location (the complete URL of the webpage that is being cited).
• Date you accessed the material (this is now optional, but is still important for web content since online content is updated often. It should be cited as day, abbreviated month, year).

Examples:

Best, Michael. "Citing the ISE." Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria, 28 Sept. 2016, ise.uvic.ca/Foyer/citing. Accessed 30 Sept. 2016.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Internet Shakespeare Editions, edited by David Bevington, modern ed., University of Victoria, 28 Sept. 2016, ise.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/AYL/M/default/. Accessed 30 Sept. 2016. 

These guidelines come from: MLA Handbook. 8th ed., The Modern Language Association of America, 2016.