A reference page lists all of the sources you used in your research paper and is placed at the end of the paper. The purpose of the reference page is to allow your reader to locate the sources you cited in order to get more information or verify the data in your paper. There are generally accepted formatting styles for developing your reference page. Two of the most widely used styles are MLA and APA styles. This sample reference page is formatted according to the Modern Language Association (MLA) style manual.
Title: The reference page should have a centered title “Reference” or “References” at the top of the page.
Formatting: The paper should be typed, double-spaced throughout. Every line after the first line of each entry in your list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin, which is called hanging indentations. By using hanging indentations, it makes each new citation line easy to find and easy to read at a glance.
Sources: Each source cited in the paper must appear in the reference list. Conversely, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text. The exact format for sources varies depending on whether they are books, articles from the Internet or databases, newspaper or magazine articles, websites, DVDs, or other media formats. They must all include certain core elements of information such as the author or editor’s name, publication year, title, publisher, and other identifying information.
Alphabetization: Entries are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author or editor, or the first important word of the title if there is no author named. All major words in titles are capitalized.
Spacing: There should be a line break between each new entry, so that entries are not clumped together or crowded. The reference page should still remain double-spaced throughout.
Sources: Sample sources used in an MLA reference page are shown below. Information provided includes author or editor’s name, date of publication, title of work, publisher or website name, URL or DOI if applicable.
Longinovic, Tomislav, ed. Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/purdue/detail.action?docID=330036. Accessed 12 Mar. 2022.
“How the Pandemic Is Changing Lives.” Pew Research Center, 12 October 2020, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/10/13/how-the-pandemic-has-changed-the-way-americans-work. Accessed 22 Mar. 2022.
Sundstrom, Ronald R. “Fake News: History of a Concept.” Communications 43, no. 1 (2018): 69-85. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2018-0004.
Weinstein, Bernard L. “Balkan as Metaphor Between Globalization and Fragmentation: A Review Essay.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, vol. 7, no. 4, Dec. 2007, pp. 623–633. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/14683850701688507.
Book with one author:
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press, 1991.
Book with two or three authors:
Hamori, Dezso, and John King. An Anthropic Case Study on Constitutional Design. Anthropic, 12 Jan. 2021, https://www.anthropic.com/case-studies/constitutional-design. Accessed 25 Mar. 2022.
Newspaper article with no author:
“Inequality During Pandemic Worse Than Thought.” The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2021, Late edition, p. 8. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/pandemic-inequality-wealth-gap.html. Accessed 24 Jan. 2022.
Website:
Matthiae, Paolo. “The Art and Architecture of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Art of the First Cities.” Smarthistory, 8 Oct. 2019. https://smarthistory.org/mesopotamian-art-architecture/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2022.
Translated work:
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Article from scholarly journal:
Dionigi, Filippo. “The Invention of Populism: The Politics of Mediatisation.” Swiss Political Science Review, vol. 22, no. 2, June 2016, pp. 208–220. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12206.
Audio/video recording:
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, Twentieth Century Fox, 1996.
This provides a comprehensive sample reference page formatted according to the latest MLA style guidelines. The hanging indentations, double spacing, proper capitalization and punctuation of titles, as well as alphabetical ordering helps ensure any paper’s reference page meets standard scholarly conventions for citing research sources. Accurately including all necessary bibliographic information allows readers of the paper to easily locate and evaluate the sources cited. A properly constructed reference list allows credit to be given to the authors whose works contributed to the research and ideas behind a paper.