MLA citation formatting has sought to simplify how sources are cited. MLA provides a template to help users build citations in MLA format.
Each citation is built from what MLA calls core elements. The number of core elements needed for a citation will depend on the source being cited. For example, citing a book may need less elements than citing a streaming TV show or a play performance. The order for the citation elements follows:
Some items may also have a second container.
Note: No highlighting should be included in your works cited page. The highlighting employed in the examples below is meant to show what section of the citation corresponds to the particular container being discussed.
The author's name is listed with the last name first, followed by the remainder of the author's name as presented in the work and ending with a period.
Example:
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 2004.
The title of the source will either be in quotation marks or italics, and it will end in a period.
Use quotation marks for:
Use italics for:
Article Example:
Fields, Ronald. "The Complexities of Noah in The Grapes of Wrath." The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1,
2009, pp. 52-61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41582098.
Book Example:
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 2004.
A container is any work that contains the source. In the case of books, plays, and other self-contained sources, you will likely not have a container source. However, shorter works, such as a poem published in a book or an article published in a journal, you will have a container.
The container is the book title, in the case of the poem, or the journal title, in the case of the article. Container titles are almost always going to be in italics.
Journal Article Example:
Fields, Ronald. "The Complexities of Noah in The Grapes of Wrath." The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1,
2009, pp. 52-61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41582098.
Book Example:
Hughes, Langston. "Question [1]." The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Books, 1995.
The other contributors section includes editors, translators, annotators, illustrators, etc. You will not abbreviate the contributor's title, so you would write out the full phrase "Edited by..." or "Translated by..."
Example:
Carver, Raymond. "Why Don't You Dance." Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of
the Short Story, Edited by Lorin Stein and Sadie Stein, Picador, 2012, pp. 198-204.
If the work you're citing has a specific edition or version, include that information here. E-books that do not have a URL are listed as versions. This means that if you're citing an e-book you downloaded to your computer and read using specific software (e.g., Kindle, iBooks, Nook, etc.) you would list this as a version.
Book Example:
McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. Kindle ed., Vintage International, 2010.
For any work with multiple volumes, issue numbers, etc. you will list those following the title of the container. This is most often seen when citing journals but you will also encounter this when citing a particular volume from a multi-volume set of books.
Article Example:
Fields, Ronald. "The Complexities of Noah in The Grapes of Wrath." The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1,
2009, pp. 52-61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41582098.
Book Example:
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. vol. 1, Liberty Fund, 2012.
List the name of the publisher as available. As indicated by the list immediately below, listing the publisher is most often connected with citing books.
Do not list the publisher name for the following works:
Book Example:
Stein, Lorin and Sadie Stein, editors. Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of
the Short Story. Picador, 2012.
Depending on the source, your date may be a year, a month and year, or a month, day, and year. If a book has more than one date listed, use the most recent year since this will correspond to the edition you are using. For items that were published on more than one date, use the one most relevant to your research. For example, if you are citing an online version of an article previously published in print, use the online version's publication date.
If you're unsure about which date to use, you may use the original publication date. For instance, if you are citing an episode of a television show that was originally aired on network TV and then later released online, you can cite the original date the show aired.
Article Example:
Scrimgeour, Andrew D. "Scribbling in the Margins." The New York Times, 2 February 2014,
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/scribbling-in-the-margins.html?_r=0.
Book Example:
Hughes, Langston. "Question [1]." The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Books, 1995.
The location will include page numbers (preceded by the abbreviation pp.), a URL for online materials, or a physical location for materials you experienced in person (e.g., a sculpture or painting at a museum). For online materials, you may have both page numbers and a URL, so include both page numbers first, followed by a comma, then the URL.
Book Example:
Carver, Raymond. "Why Don't You Dance." Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of
the Short Story, Edited by Lorin Stein and Sadie Stein, Picador, 2012, pp. 198-204.
Article Examples:
Scrimgeour, Andrew D. "Scribbling in the Margins." The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2014,
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/scribbling-in-the-margins.html?_r=0.
Wilson, Christopher P. "'He Fell Just Short of Being News': Gatsby's Tabloid Shadows." American Literature,
vol. 84, no. 1, 2012, pp. 119-149.
Some citations may require a second container such as when citing an article retrieved from an online database. The title of the source would be the article title, the first container would be the journal title, and the second container would be the database name. This causes, essentially, the location for the article to be moved to the end of the citation. See the last tab for more information about this.
Another example of using a second container is when citing streaming TV episodes. Essentially the second container is the place or platform hosting the content. In the journal article example and the streaming TV episode example, JSTOR and Amazon are the platforms by which users are able to access the information.
Article Example:
Fields, Ronald. "The Complexities of Noah in The Grapes of Wrath." The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1,
2009, pp. 52-61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41582098.
TV Show Example:
" My Fault", Scrubs, season 3, episode 20, Touchstone Productions, 2004. Amazon Prime, www.amazon.com.
When the citation requires a second container, the location will follow the second container as the link directs users to the second containers which provides access to the specific element.
For articles in an online database, the link follows the second container, as the link takes the user to the database where the article is available.
Article Example:
Fields, Ronald. "The Complexities of Noah in The Grapes of Wrath." The Steinbeck Review, vol. 6, no. 1,
2009, pp. 52-61. JSTO http://www.jstor.org/stable/41582098.
TV Show Example:
" My Fault", Scrubs, season 3, episode 20, Touchstone Productions, 2004. Amazon Prime, www.amazon.com.