Skip to Main Content

HS CIC: MLA

MLA

Modern Language Association (MLA) style is most commonly used to cite sources within the language arts, cultural studies, and other humanities disciplines. MLA style, currently in the 8th edition of the MLA manual, guides the formatting of citations for an essay. There are two parts of a citation in an essay: 

  • In-text citations 
  • Works Cited page

Elements of an MLA citation:

  1. Author.
  2. Title of source.
  3. Title of container,
  4. Other contributors,
  5. Version,
  6. Number,
  7. Publisher,
  8. Publication date,
  9. Location

Container: When the source being documented forms part of a larger whole, the larger whole can be thought of as a container that holds the source. For example, a short story may be contained in an anthology. The short story is the source, and the anthology is the container.

Examples

Book
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.
Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. MacMurray, 1999.

 

Website
Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). "Title." Name of Site. Version number, Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), URL, DOI or permalink. Date of access (if applicable).
The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl. Accessed 12 Oct. 2019.
Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html. Accessed 6 July 2015.

All examples courtesy of the Purdue OWL.

Works Cited Page

Works Cited Style Guide

  • Separate page at the end of your research paper 
  • Same margins and header as the rest of your paper
  • Label the page Works Cited (do not italicize the words Works Cited or put them in quotation marks)
  • Center the words Works Cited at the top of the page
  • Citations aligned with the left margin
  • Double-space all citations.  Don't skip spaces between entries
  • Citations should have a hanging indent: Indent the second and subsequent lines of citations by 0.5 inches
  • Entries listed alphabetically by author's last name. If no author, alphabetize by first element included in the citation