MLA follows a container style for citations, especially on the Works Cited page. This style helps identify components of different sources for consistent citations. Use the guide below to format your citations. Use periods and commas where shown in the guide.
| Book example: Author Last, First Name. Title of Work: Capital Letters for Words in the Subtitle. Publisher Name, Year of publication. |
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Von Glahn, Denise. Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life. University of Illinois Press, 2017. |
| Journal article example: Author Last, First Name. “Title of article.” Journal or Publication Title, vol. #, no. #, Publication Year. pp. pages of article. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy. |
|
Guneratne, Anthony. “The Greatest Shakespeare Film Never Made: Textualities, Authorship, and Archives.” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 34, no. 3, 2016, pp. 391–412. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26355195. |
| Website example: Group or compiler name. Title of website. Publisher or owner of website, Date of publication. URL for website. Accessed Date Mo. Year. If there is no compiler, start with the website name. The access date is optional. |
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University of Northern Colorado. University of Northern Colorado, 2024, https://www.unco.edu/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2024. |
For citation examples of other source types that are not listed here, visit the online MLA Style Guide or the Purdue OWL MLA Guide.
1. The first line of a source on the Works Cited page is left-justified and the second and any additional lines are indented one-half inch. MLA recommends using the Tab key or the Hanging Indent tool for this, and not five spaces. Entries are double-spaced, like the rest of the paper.
Tsuji, Nobuo. History of Art in Japan. Translated by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Columbia University Press, 2019.
2. The name of a single author is written as Last Name, First Name.
Lebo, Kate. The Book of Difficult Fruit. Picador, 2021.
3. Names of multiple authors are cited with the names separated by commas and the word "and." The "and" appears before the final author's first name, after a comma. The first author's name is written as Last Name, First Name. If a source has two authors, the second name is written as First Name Last Name. For more than two authors, include only the first author's name in last Name, First Name format, followed by a comma and "et al."
Kim, Seung-kyung and Carole R. McCann. Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Routledge, 2003.
Eyadat, Zaid et al. Islam, State, and Modernity: Mohammed al-Jabri and the Future of the Arab World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
4. If the author is an organization, simply list the organization name as the author. For a work whose author and publisher are the same organization, list the title first, followed by the organization and publication date.
Library of Esoterica. Witchcraft. Taschen GmbH, 2021.
MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021.
5. If there is no named author, start with the title of the work in italics. Only when a source is signed with Anonymous do you use Anonymous as the author at the start of the citation.
Experience Japan. 2nd ed., Lonely Planet Global Limited, 2024.
6. If your source does not have a publication date, particularly if it is a web page, skip the date and add the date the work was accessed at the end of the citation.
"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.
7. For a video, include as much descriptive information as you have for the video, such as the author if known, video title, uploader, website where you found it, and the date and URL.
"How to Draw the Aztec Calendar." YouTube, Uploaded by eHow, 21 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXqyEdSddj4
Thomas, Andre. "The Effective Use of Game-Based Learning in Education." YouTube, Uploaded by TEDx Talks, 10 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X1m7tf9cRQ.
8. Capitalize all words in the title except articles (a, an, the), prepositions (of, in, to, etc.), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, etc.). However, capitalize any of these words if they begin a title or subtitle.
Lebo, Kate. The Book of Difficult Fruit. Picador, 2021.
Von Glahn, Denise. Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life. University of Illinois Press, 2017.
A typical Works Cited page citation for a book includes these elements:
Author Last, First Name. Title of Work: Capital Letters for Words in the Subtitle. Publisher Name, Year of publication.
Lebo, Kate. The Book of Difficult Fruit. Picador, 2021.
Von Glahn, Denise. Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life. University of Illinois Press, 2017.
For two authors, the name order changes after the first author. Use commas and the word "and" to separate authors.
Kim, Seung-kyung and Carole R. McCann. Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Routledge, 2003.
For more than two authors, include only the first author's name in Last Name, First Name format, followed by a comma and "et al."
Eyadat, Zaid et al. Islam, State, and Modernity: Mohammed al-Jabri and the Future of the Arab World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
A typical Works Cited page citation for an eBook closely resembles the citation for a book and includes these elements:
Author Last, First Name. Title of Work: Capital Letters for Words in the Subtitle. eBook, Publisher Name, Year of publication.
Yoon, Hyaesin. Prosthetic Memories: Postcolonial Feminisms in a More-Than-Human World. eBook ed., Duke University Press, 2025.
A typical Works Cited page citation for an article includes these elements, with a website or digital object identifier (DOI). A DOI is preferable to a website URL for a scholarly journal article because the DOI is a permanent, online location for the article.
The formatting rules for multiple authors also apply to scholarly articles. Article titles are always in quotation marks. Journal titles are always italicized because they are the containers for the articles:
Author Last, First Name. “Title of article.” Journal or Publication Title, vol. #, no. #, Publication Year. pp. pages of article. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy.
Vecina, Maria Luis, et al. Eco-anxiety or Simply Eco-worry? Incremental Validity Study in a Representative Spanish Sample. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 16, 2025, pp.1-11, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1560024. PMID: 40276657; PMCID: PMC12020512. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12020512/
Guneratne, Anthony. “The Greatest Shakespeare Film Never Made: Textualities, Authorship, and Archives.” Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 34, no. 3, 2016, pp. 391–412. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26355195.
A typical Works Cited page citation for a chapter in an edited book includes these elements. The formatting rules for multiple authors also apply here:
Author Last, First Name. “Title of chapter.” Title of work: Capital Letters for Words in the Subtitle, edited by Editor First Last Name and Editor First Last Name, Publisher name, Year of publication, pp. pages of chapter.
Morris, Kimberly. "Shine Brightly, Diamonds." Overworked and Undervalued: Black Women in America, edited by Rosalyn Davis and Sharon Bowman, Lexington Books, 2023, pp. 1-16.
Chen, Kuan-Hung. "Seriousness, Playfulness, and a Religious Reading of Tianshu." Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art: Cultural and Philosophical Reflections, edited by Hsingyuan Tsao and Roger T. Ames, State University of New York Press, 2011, pp. 67-94.
A typical Works Cited page citation for a website includes these elements, with or without a compiler, corporate name, or group name. The formatting rules for multiple authors also apply to websites:
Group or compiler name. Title of website. Publisher or owner of website, Date of publication. URL for website. Accessed Date Mo. Year.
If there is no group or compiler, start with the website title:
University of Northern Colorado. University of Northern Colorado, 2024, https://www.unco.edu/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2024.
With a group or compiler:
Flaherty, Colleen. “Stress is Hurting College Students.” Inside Higher Ed, 23 May 2023, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/health-wellness/2023/05/23/survey-stress-hurting-college-students.