Using Noodletools to make a bibliography page entry

Noodletools is an online tool to help you write bibliography pages for your research papers (Reference page for APA and Works Cited page for MLA). They would like you to pay them money, but if you follow these instructions, you can use the service free.

1. Go to www.noodletools.com.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Free Tools.
3. Select Noodletools Express.
4. If you are writing an APA paper, click the box that says  APA . If you are writing an MLA paper, click the box that says  MLA .
5. Figure out what kind of resource you are citing (book, internet site, etc.) and click the drop-down menu that says Cite a:.
6. Choose the kind of resource that best matches what you are working on and click the blue  Create Citation  box.
7. The program will walk you through all the choices to make a good bibliography page entry. Please note:
   • Items with a red asterisk * are required. The program will complain if you try to make a citation without them.
   • You probably will not have an entry for every blank. If you don’t have one, don’t invent something. In particular, if your source does not have an author specified, don’t invent something like “NA” or “Author unknown.” Just leave it blank and Noodletools will take care of things for you.
   • Both the MLA Works Cited page and the APA References page are very particular about capitalization, and Noodletools will help you in that department. Follow their advice. If you foul something up, the program will suggest correct capitalization with a yellow  Suggestions  call-out box.
8. After you have filled in all the blanks that apply to your source, click the blue  Save  button.
9. Now find the text which says, “Need help writing a parenthetical (in-text) reference for this entry?” and click the blue link. This will show you what to put in the body text of your paper where you quoted or referred to this resource. (There is more good advice below the sample citation. Read it!)
10. Highlight, copy, and paste the Noodletools item onto your bibliography page. An ordinary “Paste” command will give you an ugly page because it brings in the Courier typeface from Noodletools and the program has inserted a lot of spaces and a hard return to fake a hanging indent. To fix this, follow the instructions below. (Don't close Noodletools yet because you will need to know what is italicized.)

APA/MLA Note

The procedure for making entries for an APA References page is exactly the same as the procedure for making MLA Works Cited entries. Two warnings:

1. Capitalization and italics for APA entries work very differently from MLA. Just follow the advice from Noodletools.
2. Both MLA and APA papers must be “pure.” If you can’t find a way to do something in APA, don’t just throw in an MLA citation. APA doesn’t have a way to cite personal letters, emails, theatrical performances and the like. Don’t just throw in an MLA citation if you have those things. Do an in-text narrative and let it go at that.

Getting these entries into your paper

These instructions work for both APA and MLA papers. If you have more than one item, they are alphabetized by whatever Noodletools put first (not by order of appearance), and each item is a separate paragraph. Begin by highlighting the Noodletools entry and copying it (Ctrl + C or command + C). Then:

LibreOffice

1. Click below the page title (Works Cited or References) to start a new paragraph.
2. Drop the Edit menu down to “Paste Special” and choose “Unformatted text.”
3. Look back to the Noodletools item to see what needs to be italicized and make your repair.
4. Drop the View menu down to “Non-printing Characters.”
5. Delete all those extra spaces and the paragraph marker ¶ inside the entry.
6. The correct paragraph style for this entry is “Bibliography 1.”

Apple Pages

1. Click below the page title (Works Cited or References) to start a new paragraph.
2. Drop the Edit menu down to “Paste and Match Style.”
3. Look back to the Noodletools item to see what needs to be italicized and make your repair.
4. Drop the View menu down to “Show Invisibles.”
5. Delete all those extra spaces and the paragraph marker ¶ inside the entry.
6. The correct paragraph style for this entry is “Bibliography.”

Microsoft 365

1. Click below the page title (Works Cited or References) to start a new paragraph.
2. Paste the entry (Ctrl + V or command + v)
3. A little window will appear with the word (Ctrl) and a picture of a clipboard. Click it or press the Ctrl key.
4. Choose “Paste text only.”
5. Look back to the Noodletools item to see what needs to be italicized and make your repair.
6. In the upper right, find the three-dot menu (…) and select “Show/hide ¶.”
7. Delete all those extra spaces and the paragraph marker ¶ inside the entry.
8. Tag the paragraph with the “Bibliography” paragraph style.
9. In the upper right, find the three-dot menu (…) and select “Paragraph Options.”
10. In the Indentation menu, choose Special: Hanging

Google Docs

1. Click below the page title (Works Cited or References) to start a new paragraph.
2. Paste the text (Ctrl + V or command + v)
3. Google Docs cannot show you the invisible characters, so you must delete them by making your best guess to turn this entry into a single paragraph.
4. Highlight the entry and drop the “Format” menu down to “Clear Formatting.”
5. The correct paragraph style for this entry is “Normal text.”
6. Highlight the entry and drop the Format menu down to “Align & indent.”
7. Choose “Indentation options” and select Special indent - Hanging - 0.5".
8. Go back to Noodletools to see what was supposed to be italicized and fix your entry.