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MLA

The MLA (Modern Language Association) was formed in the United States in 1883 as a professional association for scholars within the fields of literature and language. The first MLA style sheet was published in 1951 and the first edition of the MLA style guidelines in 1977. The current 9th edition was published in 2021.

MLA is a parenthetical reference style, which means that in-text references are provided within parentheses at the end of the sentence in which the reference is given. Footnotes (or endnotes) are not used for referencing, but can be used for additional information.

The guidelines below cover only basic text types; for other kinds of sources and for more detailed information, see links to online resources at the bottom of this page:

The AWELU section on MLA referencing contains the following items:

In-text references

In-text references supply information on the source within the text. Full information about the source is then provided in the Works Cited list. In MLA, in-text references provide the last name of the author and page number of the cited text. There are two ways of doing this; either the author's name is given in the sentence and the page reference within parentheses after the quotation or other kind of citation, or the whole reference is provided within parentheses. The first option, where the name of the author cited forms part of the sentence, gives more prominence to the cited author.
Showalter has shown that...(38)
Anorexia nervosa was first identified as an illness in 1873 (Showalter 127).
Quotations are referenced in the same way:
In 1873, anorexia nervosa was first identified as "a new clinical syndrome among adolescent girls" (Showalter 127).
If the writer refers to several works by the same author, the title (or a short version thereof) is provided in the parenthetical reference. In the example above, the parenthetical reference would then look like this: (Showalter, The Female Malady 127) - the full title of the work referred to being The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980.

Works Cited list

In MLA style, the list of references is called "Works Cited". Examples of various kinds of bibliographic posts are given below. In the Works Cited list, the entries are listed in alphabetical order. Hanging indentation (which means that the second and subsequent lines of the entry are indented) is often used in Works Cited lists.

Book

The MLA format for book entries in the Work Cited list looks like this:

Author's Last Name, First Name(s). Book Title. Publisher, Year of Publication.

Example:
Keen, Suzanne. Narrative Form. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Note that

  • Book titles are italicised and all words apart from articles, prepositions and conjunctions start with a capital letter.
  • "Publisher" is the name of the publishing company. For books published after 1900, no place of publication is provided. However, for books published prior to 1900, the format ...Place of publication, Publisher... is used.
  • "Year of publication" is the publication year of the edition that is used. If edition used is not the first one, the date of that first edition can be inserted after the book title. In the field of Literature, this is common to indicate the original date of publication of e.g. a novel.
Book by two or more authors

If there are two or more authors, the names are listed in the following way. Note that only the first writer's name is written in reverse order:

First Author's Last Name, First Author's First Name(s), and Second Author's First and Second Name(s).

Example:
Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt.  Practicing New Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Journal article

The MLA format for scholarly journal article entries in the Work Cited list looks like this:

Author's Last Name, First Name(s). "Article Title." Journal Title, Volume, Issue, Year of Publication, Inclusive Page Numbers.

Example:
Newton, Judith Lowder. "Pride and Prejudice: Power, Fantasy, and Subversion in Jane Austen." Feminist Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 1978, pp. 27-42.

Note that

  • The title of the article is written within quotation marks.
  • The title of the journal is italicised.
  • Inclusive page numbers cover the whole article, not only the part of the article referred to. In the Works Cited, the inclusive page number(s) are preceeded by p. (pp.).

Newspaper or magazine article

Note that the bibliographic entry for newspaper (or magazine) articles will look slightly different in MLA depending on which items are relevant / available:

Author's Last Name, First Name(s). "Article Title". Newspaper title, Day Month Year, inclusive page numbers.

Examples:
Booth, Stephanie. "How We Got Our Daughter to Speak after 8 Years of Silence". Good Housekeeping, December 2015, pp. 107-108.

King, Richard. "With Silent Friends". The Tatler, 10 March 1915, p. 316.

Davis, Nicola. "Dogs understand both words and intonation of human speech". The Guardian, 30 August 2016, www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/30/dogs-understand-both-words-and-intonation-of-human-speech. Accessed 4 September 2019.

Note that

  • If the author is unknown, the entry starts with the title of the article.
  • Article titles are written within quotation marks.
  • Newspaper (or magazine) titles are italicised.
  • All titles words (except preposition, articles, and conjunctions) start with a capital letter.
  • Dates are usually written in the Day Month Year format. If a monthly publication, only month and year are provided.
  • Inclusive page number(s) are preceded by p. for single page and pp.for multi-page articles.
  • If the publication has been accessed online, the date of access is stated (preceded by "Accessed") and the url is provided without https://.
 

Chapter in edited book

If a book consists of several articles by different writers, an editor has compiled and prepared the articles for publication. If references are made to a particular chapter in the edited volume, the entry in the Works Cited should be listed under the name of the author of that chapter. The format for chapter in an edited volume is:

Author's Last name, First name. "Chapter Title." Book Title, edited by Editor's Name(s), Publisher, Year, Inclusive page numbers.

Example:
Wagner, Linda. "Toni Morrison: Master of Narrative." Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheick, University Press of Kentucky, 1985, pp. 191-205.

Note that

  • "edited by" is added before the name of the editor(s)
  • The page numbers of the article (book chapter) are provided

If the whole book is referred to, it will be listed under the editor's name. In that case, "editor(s)" will be added after the name(s) of the editor(s).

MLA style online resources

There are many good online university resources for MLA. If you have questions on how to use MLA in your writing, check with your supervisor or with your library.

Purdue University Online Writing Lab offers comprehensive guidelines on MLA referencing format:

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