Customer Reviews
Ignore the one-star reviews - By: Brandon Simpson, 17 Jan 2008 
First of all, you should ignore all the one-star reviews of this book. Those reviews criticize the MLA, not the book. The book itself is really good. One of my English professors recommended it to our class. She also said that every English major should have a copy of it. I had always used Diana Hacker's bookin other classes. After she recommended it, I decided to check it out at the bookstore. After skimming through it, I decided to buy it. It was so much easier to follow than Hacker's book. I will use itin the future. Gibaldi devotes an entire chapter just to plagiarism (and how to avoid it).
Brandon Simpson
Disappointing - By: 70's addict, 13 Jan 2008 
I'm a french student who is writing a research paperin English. This book has helped me getting through some basic problems, such as punctuation, margins, how to avoid plagiarism, how to make a bibliography, cite sources... But the information given about the overall aspect & presentation of a research paper is disappointing. Nothing about the making of a table of contents, or an index, where to put the illustrations. Only three pages cover the issues of typing, paper, margins, spaces, heading & titles & page numbers (including information given for typewriter users... ridiculous). And, on the contrary, it sometimes gives a lot of details when an example would have made the thing clear enough, & gives loads of examples when one sentence to explain would have been sufficient. Morerover, when looking for a precise piece of information, it sometimes proves diffucult to find & ambiguous. So,in fact, I use it but hate it. But there are so many kinds of research works & methods that I might as well be the only person not satisfied with this book.
Highly recommended style of writing research papers - By: Naoufal Morjani, 30 Jul 2007 I have already used MLA when I wrote my research paper to obtain the BA degree two years ago. And now I have just bought it from Amazon because I am interestedin obtaining a PhD; & MLA is the best choice I could make to followin my future dissertation. I really recommmend it for all students who are to present dissertations as it is a universally recognized style, easy to follow & apply.
A great guide to a great style - By: Kurt Messick, 06 Jan 2006 The MLA (Modern Language Association) style is my preferred style for writing papers - bothin terms of citation &in terms of overall format. While I must confess to making small changes (based on my British English background & preference), I still adhere to most of the MLA standards when it comes to putting together research papers.
This is a guide that is useful not only for writing, but also for researching. There is a section that discusses researching bothin a library & online. The guide then gives a refresher coursein grammar, spelling, sentence & paragraph construction, & other elements of style that are usefulin the general academic paper.
By far the most useful part of this guide is the section that shows how to referencein footnotes, endnotes, in-line/in-text citations & proper documentation of sources. While there are few elements due to new media (how does one reference a video on MPG format that doesn't actually reside on a website?) that might not be covered, this guide is fairly comprehensive when it comes to in-print, internet, & other media resources.
For undergraduate students, graduate students, academic writers & general writers, the MLA style is easy to follow, fairly intuitivein approach, & comprehensible even by those not trainingin such styles.
