MLA Citation Guide (9th Edition)

MLA is an abbreviation which stands for Modern Language Association. MLA style is a set of guidelines for writing, formatting, and citing sources in scholarly works and student research papers and is most commonly used in the humanities and liberal arts.

In MLA, you must "cite" sources that you have paraphrased, quoted or otherwise used to write your research paper. Cite your sources in two places:

1. In the body of your paper where you add a brief in-text citation.
2. In the Works Cited list at the end of your paper where you give more complete information for the source.

Any source information that you provide in an in-text citation must correspond to a source on your Works Cited page.

Example:

According to B.F. Skinner, behavior analysis is necessary for society because "almost all major problems involve human behavior" (24).

or

Behavior analysis is necessary for society because "almost all major problems involve human behavior" (Skinner 24).

Work Cited

Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, p. 24.

Each entry on a works cited list is made up of elements that are common to most works and appear in a specific order. The correct punctuation appears at the end of each core element. 

1. Author. Personal author(s), editor(s), corporate author, director

2. Title of source. Book title, article title, chapter title, title of TV episode, film title

3. Title of container, Book title, journal title, title of TV series

4. Other contributors, Translators, performers

5. Version, Edition, abridged/unabridged, director’s cut

6. Number, Volume and issue numbers, season and episode numbers

7. Publisher, Publishers, university presses, organizations, governments, production companies

8. Publication date, Use the date most pertinent to you, full dates are given in this format: 28 Oct. 2022. For sources with a season and year, give the season in lowercase letters: spring 2020.

9. Location. Page number(s), web address, DOI, stable URL, time on a recording, DVD disc number

Adapted from the online MLA Style Center

Recent Updates to MLA Style

• If a core element does not exist or cannot be found, simply omit the element from the Works Cited entry. Placeholders including "n.d." for "no date" and "n.p." for "no publisher" are no longer used.
• Include a DOI (digital object identifier) when available using the prefix https://doi.org/xxxxxxxx.
• The URL, without http:// or https://, should be included for Web sources.
• The source's medium (Print., Web., etc.) is no longer included.
• Some sources are whole and some are part of one or two containers and require the repetition of some core elements for each container. Add the elements to your reference entry from Author through to Location, then add any second elements in that same order. For example, journal articles from databases have two containers: the first is the journal in which the article is contained and the second is the database which contains the journal.
• In the Works Cited entry, "p." is used before citing a page number and "pp." is used before citing a page range.

MLA Style Center: What's New with the Ninth Edition includes information on formatting your research paper, citation practice template, FAQs, sample papers, and quick guide. They also provide citation guideline for common titles of online works.

Gaelen Pinnock, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons