MLA Citation
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What you get with MLA Citation
MLA style is the referencing system of the Modern Language Association, set out in the MLA Handbook, ninth edition, published in 2021. It is the usual standard in English literature, modern and comparative languages, film and media, cultural studies and much of the wider humanities. MLA is an author-page system: an in-text citation gives the author's surname and a page number with no comma and no year between them, and the full details sit in a Works Cited list at the end of the paper. Since the eighth edition, MLA has been built on nine core elements assembled in a fixed order, together with the container system that lets a single template describe a poem in an anthology, an article in a journal held on a database, or an episode of a series on a streaming platform. Most MLA questions reduce to one question — how an awkward source fits that template — and this page works through the rules students check most often.
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- Referencing explained and checked in your institution’s style — APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago and more
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- Worked examples supplied as labelled models to study and cite, never to submit
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Which MLA edition is current, and which subjects use it?
The current edition is the MLA Handbook, ninth edition, released in 2021; work from it unless your department explicitly tells you to stay on the eighth. The ninth edition kept the nine core elements and the container system introduced in the eighth (2016) unchanged, so an eighth-edition entry is usually still correct in shape. What the ninth added was fuller guidance on paper formatting, inclusive language, notes, annotated bibliographies and the punctuation between elements. MLA dominates literature and languages departments; history, philosophy and theology are more likely to use a note-based style, and the social sciences an author-date one. If a history or philosophy module moves you from MLA to footnotes, see how the main styles compare before converting a list of sources.
How do MLA in-text citations work?
An MLA in-text citation gives the author's surname and the page number in brackets with nothing between them: (Morrison 45). There is no comma, no "p." and no year. If you name the author in your sentence, only the page goes in brackets: Morrison describes the scene as unbearable (45). Two authors are both named: (Gilbert and Gubar 213). Three or more become the first surname plus et al.: (Ahmed et al. 17). With no author, use a shortened form of the title, punctuated as in the entry. If you cite two works by one author, add the short title: (Morrison, Beloved 45). The citation sits before the closing full stop, but after the final punctuation of a block quotation.
What are the nine core elements, and how do containers work?
The nine core elements are the ordered slots MLA uses to describe any source, each followed by a set punctuation mark. A container is the larger whole that holds the source: a journal that holds an article, an anthology that holds a poem, a series that holds an episode. Elements three to nine describe that container and close with a full stop. When the container itself sits inside something larger, such as a database or streaming platform, you repeat the relevant elements as a second container, on the pattern: Journal Title, vol. 68, no. 2, 2017, pp. 145-67. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx. Skip any element that does not apply rather than inventing a placeholder.
- Author.
- Title of Source.
- Title of Container,
- Contributor,
- Version,
- Number,
- Publisher,
- Publication Date,
- Location.
How is a Works Cited list ordered, formatted and capitalised?
Entries are alphabetised by the first element of each entry, normally the author's surname, or the title when there is no author, ignoring an initial A, An or The. The list begins on a new page under the centred heading Works Cited, is double-spaced throughout, and carries a hanging indent of half an inch (1.27 cm). Invert only the first author's name; a second follows in normal order after "and", and three or more become the first name plus et al. For several works by one author, alphabetise by title and either repeat the name or replace it with three hyphens and a full stop. Titles take title case, italicised for self-contained works and in quotation marks for works held inside them.
How does MLA handle title case, DOIs, URLs and access dates?
MLA capitalises the first word, the last word and all principal words of a title, leaving articles, prepositions of any length, coordinating conjunctions and the "to" of an infinitive lower case unless they open or close the title or subtitle. Give a DOI whenever one exists, written out in full in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx, in preference to a URL; where there is no DOI, supply a stable URL with the http:// or https:// removed. An access date is optional — include it when the source has no publication date or may change: Accessed 4 Mar. 2026. Dates run day, month, year, abbreviating months of more than four letters, so Sept. but May, June and July in full.
What does AMDEX Scholar Labs do on an MLA Works Cited list?
We check your existing citations against the ninth edition and show you what needs changing and why. That means reconciling every in-text citation against a Works Cited entry and back again, testing whether the container structure fits the source you actually used, and checking element punctuation, title case, italics against quotation marks, the et al. threshold, alphabetisation, hanging indents and DOI form. Where a rule is unclear we build a worked example from one of your own sources so you can apply it to the rest yourself. This is support for work you write and submit yourself, alongside essay editing and proofreading. Send a draft chapter or Works Cited list through contact us.
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MLA Citation: common questions
MLA uses et al. from three authors onwards. One or two authors are always named in full: (Gilbert and Gubar 213), and in the Works Cited list as Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. With three or more, give the first author inverted, then et al. — Ahmed, Sara, et al. — and cite in text as (Ahmed et al. 17). The full stop belongs after al. only, since et is a complete word. MLA sets no separate rule for unusually long author lists.
No. Ibid. and op. cit. belong to note-based systems such as Chicago's notes and bibliography or Oxford footnoting — and Chicago itself now prefers a shortened note to ibid. — not to MLA. In MLA you repeat the short parenthetical citation each time: (Morrison 45), then (Morrison 62). Where you cite the same source repeatedly in one passage and no ambiguity can arise about which work is meant, the page number alone is acceptable: (62). MLA notes do exist, but for content or bibliographic comment rather than routine attribution.
Cite the author's surname alone, or a shortened title if there is no author, and stop there. Do not invent paragraph, screen or section numbers. If the source itself numbers its paragraphs or sections, you may cite them explicitly: (Chen, par. 7). For audio and video, give a timestamp or timestamp range from the version you consulted, written out in full, such as (00:07:15-00:07:22). For an unpaginated e-book, a chapter number is more stable than a device-dependent page number.
MLA is author-page and APA is author-date, and that difference drives most of the rest. MLA gives (Morrison 45) with no comma and no year; APA gives (Morrison, 1987, p. 45). MLA ends with a Works Cited list, APA with References. MLA uses title case for all titles, APA sentence case for articles and books. MLA uses the container system and the word "and" between two authors, where APA uses an ampersand inside brackets. See APA citation for that system in detail.
No, not by default. MLA papers normally open without one: your name, your instructor's name, the course and the date sit flush left at the top of the first page, with the title centred below in title case, no bold and no underlining. A header carries your surname and the page number in the top right corner of every page, and the whole paper, Works Cited included, is double-spaced. Where your department requires a title page, its instruction takes precedence over the handbook.
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