Do a Google Search.

In the search bar, include the name of your country along with some key words that will narrow your search to the kind of article you are looking for.

Below are some examples. In the left-hand column are examples of search terms that you can use if you're writing a "pro" paper.

In the right-hand column are terms you can use if you're writing a "con" paper.

In either case, what you don't want to do is simply type "Russia" into the search bar and hope that Google can read your mind.

Browse through some articles until you find one that you can use. The best articles (for your purposes) are ones written by opinionated authors with strong points of view. Their opinions are great evidence that your thesis is true.

Bookmark the article so that you can find it again easily. (If you don't know how to bookmark a webpage, ask me!)

Name of Author

Find the name of the author. It's usually at the beginning of the article or the end of the article. Occasionally, you may have to click a link that says "About Me" or something like that to find the name.

On your Works Cited page, write the name of the author, last name first. After the name, put a period. Your Works Cited page should now look like this:

Name of Article

Next comes the name of the article. Place it within quotation marks and follow it with a period. Your Works Cited page should now look like this:

Notice that the closing quotation mark (called the end quote) comes after the period.

Name of Website

Usually you will find this in the banner ribbon at the top of the page. You can also look at the URL (the address bar at the top of your browser). The name of the website is almost always the first part of the URL, the part that comes before the ".com".

For example, if the URL of the webpage is "jeffstravelblog.com", you can be pretty sure that the name of the website is "Jeff's Travel Blog."

Put the name of the website into your Works Cited Page. Websites always get italicized, and don't forget the period.

Your Works Cited Page should now look like this:

Date of Article

You can usually find the date of the article at the top of the article or at the bottom of the article.

Note the proper format for writing the date:

• 8 June 2016.

In other words, the day comes first, followed by the month, followed by the year, followed by a period. There are no commas anywhere in the date.

Furthermore, months with more than four letters get abbreviated after the first three. For example, the date "3 September 2014" would get abbreviated to:

• 3 Sep. 2014.

Your Works Cited page should now look like this:

Sometimes you may have an article with only a year. That's fine. If all you have is a year, then just put down the year.

At other times you won't be able to find any date at all. In this case, you indicate this fact with the abbreviation "n.d." which stands for "no date."

• Note that the abbreviation n.d. is written in lower case letters. If your computer tries to capitalize it, fix it. (You might also want to go to "preferences" and change your settings so that your computer stops automatically capitalizing things).

In the case of an article without a date, your Works Cited page should now look like this:

Web

Next you're going to type the word "Web." That's right, just type the word "Web" with a capital "W". This means that you found your article on the Web.

If your source is not online (for example, if your source is a book or a magazine or a DVD) then you'll put something else in this slot. For example, you might write the word "Print" to indicate that it is a book.

But these days, most of your research will be done online, on the web. And the exceptions are easy enough to deal with. Just go online and do a search for "MLA how do I cite a book" or "MLA how do I cite a TV show."

But don't worry about that now. Let's assume that your article was found on the web, so just type the word "Web" with a capital "W" and follow it with a period.

Your Works Cited Page should now look like this:

Date You Accessed the Article

Web pages get put up and taken down all the time. The fact that a webpage is up today is no guarantee that it will still be online tomorrow. By writing the date you saw the article, you are, in effect, affirming:

"I can't guarantee that this article will still be there when you try to find it online, but I give you my word of honor that it was here today."

So the "date you accessed the article" is always the date that you saw it online. In other words, it's today's date.

Don't forget to format the date properly.

Your Works Cited Page should now look like this:

URL

Last comes the URL (the web address). Put it between angle brackets (the little brackets that are over the comma and the period on your keyboard). They look like this: <>.

Just copy and paste it into your paper, then add the angle brackets and the final period.

Your Works Cited page should now look like this:

And that's it! Almost. You still have to double-space it and add a hanging indent and alphabetize your sources—but you can do that later. At least you've done most of the work of putting your source into your Works Cited page.

Take a deep breath. It's a moment for celebration. I like to think of it this way: I now have permission to "steal" anything I want from that webpage. Of course, it's not really stealing because I'm going to cite it properly.

But it sure makes me happy to think that any words on that webpage that I want to incorporate into my own paper—all I have to do is to copy and paste those words onto my page, slap a few quotation marks around it, and add a parenthetical citation with the name "Smith" at the end of the quote. And nobody can accuse me of plagiarism, because I haven't plagiarized anything. I'm simply citing a source.

Anyway, take a deep breath. You have just put your first source into your Works Cited page. It's a moment for celebration.

Congratulations! You're done with this lesson.

Type of Evidence

Greece has more than 1,000 beaches.

The world-famous Parthenon is located in Athens.

The seafood you'll find in coastal villages is always fresh and delicious.

Greek people are some of the friendliest people in the world.

Athens is known for its ancient culture. Monuments built by the Ancient Greeks can be seen everywhere.

My favorite place in the whole world is Greece. When I went with my family last year, we had a fantastic time. The food was delicious and the prices were reasonable. I can't wait to go back!

Select the phrase, sentence, or sentences that you want to incorporate into your own paper and copy them onto your clipboard.

• With your mouse, select the words.
• Right-click on the selected words.
• Choose Copy.

Paste the words into your paper.

• Right-click somewhere in the body of your document (between your title and your Works Cited page).
• From the pop-up menu choose Paste without formatting. This will ensure that you aren't also importing a bunch of code that may give you trouble later.

Make a decision: Are you going to put this information into your own words?

In the case of statistics and facts, it's usually best to put the information into your own words.

In the case of phrases and sentences, you could put them into your own words—(that's called an indirect quote)—but it's often not worth the trouble. If you have chosen a good quote, why not keep it intact? (That's called a direct quote).

• Indirect quotes do not get put within quotation marks.
• Direct quotes do get put within quotation marks.

Add a parenthetical citation.

You must now cite your source properly by adding a parenthetical citation with the last name of the author of your source.

Check Your work.

If you have followed the these steps correctly, your paper should now look very much like this:

Congratulations! You're done with this lesson.