Students Fail to Read Sources Deeply

The Citation Project, a national study of 174 student papers from 16 colleges and universities, is examining how students use sources in their research papers. Here are some highlights of the preliminary findings, released this year:

Students rarely cite material located very far into sources:

46% of all of the citations that students made are to the first page of the source, and 23% are to the second page.

77% of all of the citations are to the first three pages of the source, regardless of whether the source is three pages or more than 400 pages long.

9% of the citations are to Page 8 of a source or beyond.

Sources are misused in one of five citations, and citations almost always draw on very short passages:

Of the 1,911 student uses of sources that the project coded, 4% are copied and cited but not marked as quotations from a source; 42% are copied and marked as quotations; 16% are “patchwritten,” defined as “restating a phrase, clause, or one or more sentences while staying close to the language or syntax of the source”; 32% are paraphrased; and 6% are summarized.

20% of the source uses represent a misuse of materials, with students failing to mark them as quotations or patchwriting.

96% of the source uses show students working with two or fewer sentences from the text rather than engaging with a sustained passage in the source.

More than half of the papers misuse sources:

Of the 174 papers the project reviewed, 19% included at least one instance of copied material that is cited but not marked as a quotation; 91% included at least one instance of copied and cited material marked as a quotation; 52% included at least one instance of patchwriting; 78% included at least one instance of paraphrasing; and 41% included at least one summary.

56% of papers misuse sources by either failing to mark copied words as a quotation or by patchwriting. Of those, 15% did both.

Source: The Citation Project (via The Chronicle)

I suppose we shouldn’t be altogether surprised that students deal so poorly with source material; we were, after all, students once. I clearly remember looking for quotes to “plug in” to papers I had already completed as faux evidence that I had done a modicum of research. It is furthermore true that my students seem to understand what constitutes plagiarism less with each passing year. Nevertheless, I think what is most troubling about these results is that they are symptomatic of a failure to instill in our students the ability and the inclination to engage with broad arguments (that span more than three pages) and critically evaluate the conclusions they draw.¹ If we cannot inspire students in the humanities to think critically about the sources they read and judge strictly the conclusions they contain —in primary and secondary sources alike— there is little to be gained by asking them to read from these sources at all. Our first goal² must be to give our students the tools and the desire they need to engage deeply and analytically when confronted with new information. Once they learn to think rather than parrot, and to approach new conclusions skeptically, as one among many, rather than as dogma handed down, perhaps then we can hope that reading will no longer be a rote exercise in scouring source material for quotes, but a consequence of a thirst for intellectual stimulation and challenging debate; and using quotes correctly and in context not a matter of convenience, but of honoring another’s intellectual labor. Why have we pursued academic careers if not for the challenge and stimulation of thinking our way through puzzling plots, literary or otherwise?

Footnotes

1. I am reminded of the Director of Jihad Watch Robert Spencer’s editorial in the Brown Daily Herald after his campus lecture in 2007. In it he points out that no one had refuted his arguments about the scriptural justification for Islamic violence committed against unbelievers. The audience, he notes, opted instead to vilify his argument (not his evidence) as an incitement to violence against Muslims. I was not in attendance at the lecture, and however poisonous his politics, I am sympathetic to his accusation that students were unwilling to “engage intellectually” with an unwelcome and troubling point of view. ↩
2. After teaching them to write, of course. ↩

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
—Benjamin Franklin

In the life of an academic, there are several more things that can be said to be certain. Among them the surprisingly difficult teaching philosophy statement, the concept of departmental service, solitary office hours, the vagaries of academic writing. And, like clockwork, the student evaluation.

In a world of increasing precision and carefully controlled experiments, the student evaluation is on its best days a blunt instrument. It is a tool meant to distill a semester of teaching down to its essential qualities, privileging, as it were, the concise over the precise, the opinion of the student over the intent of the professor, the fleeting, momentary conviction over the enduring understanding.¹ It is often the only (nominally) meaningful feedback we get from students. It is permanent, and its indelible judgment can weigh heavily, for better or worse, on the young academic’s future. Yet they cannot answer some very basic, very important questions about the students and classroom that produce them. Put another way, student evaluations fail by asking students to reflect without also asking them to self-reflect.

Student evaluations are on some level a tacit affirmation that student experience is at least as important as an instructor’s expertise or the actual process of learning in the classroom. With that in mind, there are two modes of self-reflection students should be, but are not asked to produce when filling out evaluations. In the first place, they are asked to reflect on their experience of their instructor —what did they like or not like about the instructor, about the class?— but never to reflect on why the instructor may have assigned a certain disliked task, emphasized a certain intricate point.² Neither, in the second (and more egregious) place, are students expected to reflect on their own role in the creation of their learning environment.

I would like to dwell on the latter of these two points. If students do not understand why the classroom is being run a certain way, or do not understand the meaning of a lesson or an assignment, the instructor is (generally) also partially to blame. Students deserve to be let in on the process of learning, at least at the level of course, class, and assignment goals and objectives. But ultimately what is lost in these situations is the possibility of a single more meaningful experience. When, on the other hand, we allow students to fail to understand that they too have roles to play in the creation and realization of their learning environments, we sacrifice something of much greater value: the opportunity to be co-creators in the classroom, the chance to bring students into the conversation as conscious collaborators in the experience of learning, and the responsibility to pass along the tools they they need to learn independently once they leave the classroom.

In the few years I have spent before a classroom, I have been on the receiving end of a few astonishingly negative evaluations from students that grossly misunderstand the course objectives,³ misread numeric scales (resulting in positive comments juxtaposed with negative numbers), blame me for departmental policy, judge me more than the class I ran, and critique how I chose to teach the material over whether I helped them to master it. Each of these reveals a powerful and problematic lack of self-reflection. To take such evaluations seriously, a number of other questions would have to be answered: To what extent did you feel invested in improving the quality of this course? Did you ever approach your instructor about your concerns? How well did you get along personally with your instructor? How would you describe the dynamics of the classroom? In what ways did you contribute to those dynamics? How often did you miss class? What do you think your daily responsibilities consisted of? How prepared did you feel for class on a daily basis? How have the most recent classes affected your perception of the course as a whole? The answer to each and every one of these questions would color any student evaluation, from the most positive to the most negative, not least because it would require to student to evaluate him or herself as well as the class and the instructor. We would be forced, then, to understand each one in its strikingly heterogeneous context.

As my graduate school department’s student evaluations stubbornly failed to address these concerns, I began to implement my own (unofficial) solution to what were seemingly intractable problems by designing my own mid-semester feedback forms. For the past several years, these brutally, breathtakingly honest moments of student self-reflection have been far and away the most useful and revealing snapshots of what works and does not work in my teaching. In keeping these evaluations fully anonymous —in the age of computers I no longer recognize anyone’s handwriting, and wouldn’t care to if I did— and by letting my students know how seriously I take their opinions (despite the low stakes of the evaluation itself), they are relieved of any “responsibility” to mince words. In permitting me to ask the questions I truly care about, and in allowing my students a productive outlet for the expression of honest classroom frustrations, these short forms have become the foundation of my reflective teaching practice.

As a way into a discussion of the broader usefulness of mid-semester feedback, permit me to comment on a selection of key quotations from a recent edition of The Chronicle:

More and more professors are using midterm student evaluations, experts say, and more and more colleges are strongly urging their faculty to collect student feedback midway through their courses. Stony Brook this year put in place a universitywide online system for collecting midcourse feedback. Professors and students are not required to use it, but university officials are hoping that both groups will see its benefits and use it to improve classrooms.

Growing use of midcourse feedback comes amid debate over how much emphasis colleges, departments, and instructors should place on student evaluations completed at the end of terms, and to what extent the information should be used to measure the quality of instructors.

—Brenda Medina, As Emphasis on Student Evaluations Grows, Professors Increasingly Seek Midcourse Feedback

While I am an enthusiastic proponent of mid-semester evaluations, I am profoundly reticent about giving administrators access to those evaluations, as well as the notion that a standardized mid-semester evaluation is the best solution.⁴ Though better than the blunt instruments normally used at the end of a course, the moment self-designed mid-semester evaluations become administratively mandated is the moment they lose the basis of their power and charm: anonymity and low stakes. As Medina notes,

Because midcourse evaluations carry lower stakes than those at the end of a course, faculty members can use them often to ask tougher questions. Sometimes, Ms. Davis said, end-of-semester questionnaires do not ask the right kinds of questions for giving professors the information they need to improve their teaching. Professors who use midcourse evaluations say they believe they get more-honest feedback from students in the middle of the term than they get at the end, in part because the professors can use midcourse evaluations to ask directed and open-ended questions.

By raising the stakes, university-mandated mid-semester evaluations would lose the essential quality that makes them so effective: the private dialogue between student and professor, in which both reflect on their roles in the classroom not as an end in itself, but as a means to a better endpoint.

At Stony Brook, the online form the university provides for midsemester evaluations includes two open-ended questions: What does the instructor do particularly well? And, what could the instructor do better?

This strikes me as a very limited set of questions. By focusing exclusively on the students’ perception of the instructor, the evaluation denies the opportunity for students to recognize themselves as agents of their own instruction. In an attempt to affirm the stake students have both in helping me to adjust my instructional practice, and them to adjust their involvement in the classroom, to work better for everyone, the mid-semester evaluation I use asks the following questions:

1. My expectations of this class were…
2. Is the class meeting these expectations? If not, please explain.
3. My experience of this course would be improved if I would…⁵
4. My experience of this course would be improved if the instructor would…
5. The most helpful aspect(s) of this course is/are…
6. The least helpful aspect(s) of this course is/are…
7. Please add any additional comments about the course or about the instructor that you wish to make:

If it is of administrative interest to collect the kind of information mid-semester evaluations reveal, the solution is of course to adapt final student evaluations to look more like mid-semester evaluations. And indeed, a few small adjustments and simple shifts in verb tense transforms this same mid-semester evaluation into a beginning-of-semester evaluation, and later into an end-of-semester evaluation. The result is a productive stop-motion animation of how student expectations of me and of themselves evolve over the course of a semester. One rarely finds adulatory pull-out quotes in these evaluations, but they are, in my opinion, the only ones that demonstrably improve my teaching practice.

Footnotes

1. It is fair to say, I think, that even the most thoughtful student cannot know the impact a course will have one, five, or ten years down the road. ↩
2. That many instructors would be unable to answer these questions themselves indicates a troubling lack of self-reflection on their part. ↩
3. Usually my own fault in part, but when student have listed “learning grammar” as the main objective of an advanced composition course, for example, I have looked elsewhere for the breakdown. ↩
4. While I do think that my mid-semester evaluation would be useful for instructors in any field, I am wary of the implication that mandating uniformity is a good idea. ↩
5. I added the word “would” at the end of this and the following question after a significant number of students in one semester used both as an opportunity to comment on the way I ran class, rather than using the former as an opportunity to reflect on their own preparation and engagement. ↩

Edit (20 May 2010): updates to book and book chapter/excerpt formats to allow for e-books.

Edit (31 May 2010): “Interview” format updated to properly format published and unpublished interviews from books and/or journals, within reason.

Edit (28 June 2010): “Print Magazine” format created to properly format print magazines. Note: The “Newspaper” format can also be used to format magazines, so long as you don’t include any extraneous information, such as “Section,” etc. MLA doesn’t want much from magazines, so the format is pretty sparse.

Edit (18 February 2011): Corrected and minor error in the “Multivolume Work” format.

Edit (25 February 2011): Corrected errors in a number of formats where “Ed.” means “Edited by” and therefore should not become “Eds.” when there is more than one editor. (The only place “Ed.” should become “Eds.” is in an edited book.)

I’ve spent a long time over the last couple of years tweaking the implementation of MLA in Bookends, and decided to take the last few days to clean them up, standardize (to the extent possible) the fields where each bit of information goes for different reference types, and make them publicly available. Feel free to grab the formats, but also be aware that using them requires some user intervention, and that they are not perfect.

It’s been years since I’ve had a clean installation of Bookends, but I don’t think I’ve mucked up any too many of the default settings. That is, if you need to switch back and forth between MLA and some other system, you should still be able to do so. If you do discover evidence to the contrary, please let me know and I will try to fix it. The reference types for which I’ve noted “Same as built-in MLA” indicates that I haven’t modified anything. Often this is because I’ve never cited anything of that type, and so have never checked whether Bookends implements it correctly or not.

The implementation of the MLA 7th edition relies heavily on the use of metatypes. Most of the functionality metatypes allow can be adapted to single references, but using metatypes keeps the information neater and more organized. If you are averse to metatypes, I offer the following (old) formats “as is,” without any guarantees that they work as they should:

• Multivolume work, 1 volume: a. t. $Ed. $e. u2$ ed.$ $Trans. $u3*. l: u, d. $Vol. $v ~of ~f`.` $Ed. $u8*. u13~ vols.~|$ $u12`.` where u2 is the edition, u3 is the translator, u8 is the editor of the complete set, u13 is the total number of volumes, and u12 is the years over which the complete set was printed. Most of these can be omitted.
• Anthology excerpt or reprint: a. "t." $Trans. $u3*~.~ v. $Ed. and trans. $u4*~. ~ $Comp. $j~. ~ $Ed. $e. u2$ ed.$ l:~ ~u, d. p-. u18. $Rpt. in $u14 $Excerpt from $u15 where u3 is the translator, u4 is the editor and translator, j is the compiler, u2 is the edition, u18 is the medium, and u14 is the volume in which it is reprinted, and u15 is the volume from which it was excerpted. Most of these can be omitted.

Finally, I welcome any format modifications or simplifications. I am fairly certain that all these formats work as MLA wants them to, even in most cases allowing unnecessary information to be omitted. I do not, however, pretend that they are elegantly expressed.

Setup

Here follows a list of all reference types included in this implementation of MLA 7th edition, as well as the Field Labels, in order. You can create these reference types and edit their corresponding field labels in the “Refs” tab of the Preferences.

I will only note where reference types depart from the following basic set of field labels. Bold text indicates that the field must be filled to generate a proper bibliographic entry. Italicised text indicates that the field is optional, but will appear in the bibliographic entry if filled.

• Author
• Title
• Editor
• [Unused]
• Volume (i.e. volume number of a multivolume work)
• Pages
• Year
• Publisher
• City
• URL
• Short Title
• Series (NB: Include series title and volume number, as desired)
• Edition (NB: 1st, 2nd, etc. Not series volume number)
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Notes
• Translator
• Ed/trans (i.e. editor & translator)
• Call Num
• ISBN/ISSN
• Language
• Orig lang (i.e. original language)
• Trans author (i.e. original spelling of author’s name)
• Trans title (i.e. title in original language)
• Orig pub (i.e. original date of publication)
• User12-User16
• DOI
• Medium (print, web, etc.)

1. Artwork: Same as built-in MLA
2. Audiovisual material: Same as built-in MLA
3. Book:
   • Pages → Total pages
   • User12 → Database
   • User13 → Access Date
   • Sample output: Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Ed. Frederick Jameson. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001. Print.
   • Sample output (no author): Popul Vuh. Ed. and trans. Adrián Recinos. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008. Print.
4. Book chapter/excerpt:
   • [Unused] → Book Title
   • User12 → Anth pages (i.e. pages in anthology in which excerpt appears if this reference is an excerpt from an anthology
   • User13 → Database
   • User14 → Access Date
   • Sample output: Barnes, Jonathan. “Metaphysics.” The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 66-108. Print.
5. Conference proceedings:
   • [Unused] → Conf Name (i.e. conference name)
   • Year used for year of publication of the proceedings
   • User12 → Conf Date (i.e. Conference date)
   • Sample output: Belmar Marchante, María Angeles. “La tensión de la dicotomía del personje actor, como acción amorosa y del autor-narrador como ocultamiento: Ardanlier, Arnalte, Leriano.” Medievo y literatura. 9-12 December 1992. Vol. 1. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993. 311-20. Print.
6. Dissertation:
   • [Unused] → Dept (i.e. department)
   • Volume → Degree (i.e. degree earned)
   • Pages → Total pages
   • Publisher → University
   • Series → Database
   • Edition → Access date
   • Translator → Thesis type
   • Ed/trans → Access’n #
   • Sample output: Last name, First Name. “Dissertation title.” Diss. University of Somewhere, 2007. Electronic Theses and Dissertations Database. Web. 23 November 2009.
7. Edited Book:
   • Author → [Unused]
   • Sample output: Nina Grabe, Sabine Lang, and Klaus Meyer-Minnemann, eds. La narración paradójica: ‘Normas narrativas’ y el principio de la ‘transgresión’. Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2006. Print.
8. Editorial: Same as built-in MLA
9. In press: Same as built-in MLA
10. Journal Article:
    • Editor → [Unused]
    • [Unused] → Journal
    • Volume → Vol (Issue)
    • Year → Date
    • City → Address
    • Series → Database
    • Edition → Access Date
    • Ed/trans → User4
    • User15 → PMID
    • User16 → PMCID
    • Sample output (print): Hutman, Norma Louise. “Universality and Unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 76.5 (1961-12): 469-73. Print.
    • Sample output (web): Aguirre Romero, Joaquín María, and Yolanda Delgado Batista. “Jorge Volpi: Las verdades absolutas siempre son mentiras.” Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios 11 (1999): n. pag. Web. 22 Dec 2009.
11. Letter: Same as built-in MLA
12. Map: Same as built-in MLA
13. Newspaper article:
    • [Unused] → Newspaper
    • Volume → Section
    • Year → Date
    • Series → User1
    • “Edition” is used for Early ed., Late ed., etc.
    • Ed/trans → Access date
    • User12 → Article type
    • Sample output (print): Kundera, Milan. “Die Weltliteratur: How we read one another.” The New Yorker 8 Jan. 2007, Reflections sec.: 28-35. Print.
    • Sample output (web): Damiani, Marcelo. “Las utopías según Jorge Volpi.” La Nación [Buenos Aires] 1 Oct. 2006, Cultura sec.: 3. Web. 23 Dec. 2009.
14. Patent: Same as built-in MLA
15. Personal communication:: Same as built-in MLA
16. Book Review:
    • Author → Rev author (i.e. review author)
    • Title → Book title
    • Editor → Book author
    • [Unused] → Journal
    • Sample output: Klinkowitz, Jerome. Rev. of The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas, by Lois Parkinson Zamora. The Yearbook of English Studies 31 (2001): 315-16.
17. Internet:
    • Editor → Site editor
    • [Unused] → Contributor (i.e. names of other contributors to the specific web page, e.g. editor, performer, compiler, narrator. Name will be output in the form that it is entered.)
    • Year → Pub Date
    • “Publisher” is publisher or sponsoring organization. If none, enter “N.p.”
    • City → Cont type (i.e. contributor type, the type of contributor named in the “Contributor” field, in any)
    • Seried → Access date
    • Call number → Genre label (i.e. for untitled works, e.g. “Home page”)
    • User12 → Version (i.e. version number of the work cited, e.g. “1.2”)
    • User13 → By (e.g. composer if a performance, author if a narrated work)
    • User14 → Last update
    • Sample output: Matthews, Kyle James. “MLA 7th edition formats for Bookends.” Synecdoche. N.p. 12 May 2010. Weblog. 19 May 2010.
    • Sample output: <Last Name, First Name>. <Contributor>, <Cont type>. “<Title>.” <Genre label>. By <By>. <Web site>. Ed. <Site editor>. <Edition> ed. Vers. <Version>. <Publisher>, <Pub date>. <Medium>. <Access date>.
18. Multivolume work:
    • [Unused] → Title
    • Volume → Total vols
    • Pages
    • Date range (i.e. years when publication began and ended)
    • Sample output: Alas, Leopoldo. La Regenta. Ed. Gonzalo Sobejano. 5ª ed. 2 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1981-1989. Print.
19. Interview:
    • Author → Interviewee
    • Title → Int title (i.e. Interview Title)
    • [Unused] → Work Title (i.e., if part of a larger work)
    • Year → Pub Date (i.e. of larger work)
    • City → Address
    • User12 → Date (i.e. of interview)
    • User13 → Interviewer
20. Frontmatter (i.e. Introdiction, Preface, Prologue, etc.) — this is a largely redundant reference type that I will probably convert to a metatype in the near future:
    • [Unused] → Intro title
    • Sample output: Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández. Introduction. Natural History of the West Indies. By Sterling Stoudemire. Ed. Sterling Stoudemire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Print.
21. Print Magazine (Use “Internet” for an internet magazine):
    • [Unused] → Magazine
    • Volume → Section
    • Year → Pub Date
22. Lecture, Speech, etc.: Same as built-in MLA
23. Anthology:
    • Author → Compiler
    • Title → Anthology
    • Pages → Total pages
    • Series → Comp/trans (i.e. Compiler & translator)
    • Sample output: The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Ed. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Here follows a list of metatypes to add after the built-in set, followed by descriptions of their uses. Metatypes must be added in the “Links” tab of the Preferences. The first six types are used for different types of sources within anthologies. See section 5.5.6 of the MLA Handbook 7th edition for more information. To learn how to link references together, see the Bookends User Guide.

1. Reprinted in : Original (book) — combines “Antholgy” with “Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Derrida, Jacques. “Semiology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva.” Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Althone Press, 1987. 17-29. Print. Rpt. in The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Ed. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. 241-246. Print.
2. Reprinted in : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article”
   • Sample output: DeMan, Paul. “Semiology and Rhetoric.” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 3.3 (1976): 42-70. Print. Rpt. in The Norton anthology of theory and criticism. Ed. Vincent B Leitch. 1st ed. New York: Norton, 2001.
3. Reprint of : Original (book) — combines “Anthology” with “Book chapter/excerpt” when title of chapter changes
   • Sample output: Last name, First name. “New Title.” Anthology Title. Ed. Person 1, Person 2. City: Publisher, 2000. Pages. Medium. Rpt. of "Original title." Original Source Title. Ed. and trans. Person 3. City: Publisher, 2000. Pages. Medium.
4. Reprint of : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article” when title of article changes
   • Sample output: same as above with journal info and formatting
5. Excerpt from : Original (book) — combines “Anthology” with “Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Ed. Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. 410-415. Print. Excerpt from Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972. 109-24. Print.
6. Excerpt from : Original (journal) — combines “Anthology” with “Journal Article”
   • Sample output: same as above with journal info and formatting
7. Multivolume work : Single Volume — combines “Multivolume work” with “Book”
   • Sample output: Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. 1st American ed. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print. Vol. 11 of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. 11 vols. 1988-1998.
8. Multivolume work : Excerpt — combines “Multivolume work” with ”Book chapter/excerpt”
   • Sample output: Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Case of Schreber; Papers on Technique; and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press, 1973. 237-60. Print. Vol. 12 of The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb and James Strachey. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. 1973.

Known issues:

1. In cases where the editor and translator of a book are the same person, they will always be listed Ed. and trans. <name> regardless of the order they are listed in the book. See section 5.5.4. I see no way around this other than requiring the user to manually enter Ed. and trans. or Trans. and ed. into each entry.
2. Editors and translators will always be listed in the following order: editors & translators, then editors, then translators. Switching the order would be pretty trivial, though. If anyone sees any reason to do so, let me know. MLA almost certainly prefers that contributors be listed in the order they appear in the book, but as far as I know that is impossible to accomplish. This also extends to anthologies, which can have compilers, editors, and translators, all of which can be performed by one or more potentially overlapping people. Since compilers and editors seem to be mutually exclusive, and I’ve yet to run into a compiler who also translates, I believe the options I’ve included —comp., ed(s)., trans., ed and trans.— should be sufficient.
3. As far as I know, there is no way to elegantly list multiple publishers from multiple cities, e.g. New York: Random House; London: Associated University Presses, <date>.
4. Edited books whose editors are also translators will not sort properly in the reference library if “Ed/trans” is used. I’m not sure what to do about that. They will sort properly in generated bibliographies, however.
5. If you excerpt from only one volume of a multivolume work but don’t include full publication information for the whole set, the volume used should appear before the city & publisher.

Download the format

Download the MLA 7th edition format. Unzip the file, and install it in the ~/Library/Application Support/Bookends/Custom Formats folder.