Amy M. Kleppner’s “Research Paper Procedure: High School” is a necessity for any English student. Each year, students consult their manuals for citation guidelines, ensuring that they don’t accidently plagiarize.

But the copy of the manual most students purchased freshman year is now outdated. The Modern Language Association released updated work citing guidelines in the seventh edition of the “MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers”, April 8–the first major change in citation regulations since 2003.

The most drastic changes include the elimination of URLs for web citations and underlining for published works. MLA has also added the name of the publication medium to the end of every citation. For example, “Print,” will be included at the end of every book citation.

MLA no longer recognizes print as the default medium of sources, marking a great milestone in the evolution of online research, according to the MLA website.

Media center specialist Ginny Trullio expects new and updated research manuals to arrive at Whitman in November. In the meantime, Trullio has been passing out the new guidelines to every English class she meets with.

Students can find the new guidelines online at http://owl.english.purdue.edu and http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla. The popular citing tool, Noodlebib (http://www.noodlebib.com), has also updated its guidelines.

Despite the availability of online resources, English resource teacher Beth Rockwell suggests that every student purchase a new research manual.

“I think the way the manual has been put together is very beneficial for kids on how to cite information,” she said. “I would totally encourage purchasing one.”