Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers

Read the student passage and determine if the student needs to cite the source of the information. If the material does not need citation because it is common knowledge, click on Common knowledge. If the material is not common knowledge and the student should cite the source, click on Needs citation.

Click Submit after each question to see feedback and to record your answer. After you have finished every question, your answers will be submitted to your instructor’s gradebook. You may review your answers by returning to the exercise at any time. (An exercise reports to the gradebook only if your instructor has assigned it.)

For help with this exercise, see Avoiding plagiarism.

Example

Question 1 of 10

Question 1. Many of William Faulkner’s novels are set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional part of Mississippi.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 1

Question 2 of 10

Question 2. William Faulkner may have gotten the word Yoknapatawpha from a 1915 dictionary of the Choctaw language.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 2

Question 3 of 10

Question 3. The writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston died in poverty in 1960.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 3

Question 4 of 10

Question 4. William Shakespeare was the only playwright of his generation known to have a long-standing relationship with a single theater company.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 4

Question 5 of 10

Question 5. Walt Disney fired and blacklisted all of his animators who went on strike in 1941.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 5

Question 6 of 10

Question 6. William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley were poets of the Romantic era.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 6

Question 7 of 10

Question 7. As of 2012, the film Titanic had earned more than two billion dollars in box office revenue worldwide.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 7

Question 8 of 10

Question 8. Heroic couplets are rhyming pairs of lines written in iambic pentameter.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 8

Question 9 of 10

Question 9. Iris Murdoch wrote many sophisticated and complex novels before she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 9

Question 10 of 10

Question 10. George Lucas made a larger fortune by selling Star Wars toys than he made by selling tickets to Star Wars.
Recognizing common knowledge in MLA papers – 10