MLA citation style: a complete guide

What is MLA citation style?

MLA is defined by the MLA Handbook, now on its 9th edition (2021). It's the dominant format in literature, languages, rhetoric, film studies, philosophy, and a long list of other humanities disciplines. Most U.S. high schools and undergraduate writing courses default to MLA for English essays too.

The in-text marker is short. Author last name, page number. That's it. The end-of-paper list is a single alphabetical Works Cited. APA leads with the year because recency matters in the sciences. MLA leads with the writer and the page because humanities readers tend to want to go back to the passage.

The big idea MLA 8 introduced — and MLA 9 kept and cleaned up — is the core elements. No more one-recipe-per-source-type. You assemble the same nine elements in the same order. If your source doesn't have one of them, you skip it.

In-text citations

MLA in-text citations are parenthetical. Author's last name and page number sit inside the parens. No comma between them. The whole thing goes before the closing punctuation of the sentence.

Multiple authors

Two authors? Both surnames, joined with "and." Three or more? First surname plus "et al."

Works without page numbers

Lots of web sources and audiovisual works don't have page numbers. Cite the author's last name and stop there. Don't invent a page number. For audio or video, use the timestamp range in hours:minutes:seconds.

The MLA core elements

Every Works Cited entry comes from up to nine core elements, in the same order, with the punctuation MLA assigns to each. If an element doesn't apply to your source, skip it and keep going.

Element 1 (Author) goes in as Last, First. The Title of source takes italics if the source stands alone — a book, film, album, website. Quotation marks if it sits inside something bigger: an article in a journal, a chapter in a book, an episode in a series. The Location is whatever tells the reader where to find it. A page range. A DOI. A URL. A permalink.

Containers and nested works

A container is the bigger work your source lives inside. A journal article lives in the journal. A short story might live in an anthology, which itself might live on a database like JSTOR. MLA 9 lets you stack two containers when that's the case. Immediate container first. Then the broader platform delivering it.

First container (Shakespeare Quarterly) gets its own publication details and closes with a period. Then the second container (JSTOR) kicks off a new run of core elements with its own location.

Journal articles

For journal articles, the article title goes in quotation marks. The journal title is italicized. Volume gets "vol." Issue gets "no." Pages get "pp." Always include a DOI if one exists. Format it as a hyperlink.

Books and book chapters

Entire book

For a whole book: author, italicized title in title case, edition (only if it's not the first), publisher, year. Drop business words like "Inc." and "Co." Keep "Press" and "Books."

Chapter or work in an anthology

For a chapter, the chapter title goes in quotation marks. The anthology is the container. Use "edited by" before the editor's name. First name first this time, not last-name-first.

Websites and online sources

Web page: author first (if there's one), then the page title in quotation marks, then the website name in italics as the container. Add the publisher next, but only if it's different from the site name. Then the date. Then the URL. Drop the "https://" prefix only if your instructor lets you. Otherwise leave the full link in.

Films, TV, and YouTube

For films and TV, MLA lets you pick the "author" based on what your paper is about. Writing on a director's cinematography? The director is your author. Writing on an actor's performance? The actor goes first. Stuck? Lead with the title. That's always a valid MLA 9 choice.

The streaming service is the second container. It follows the production company and starts a fresh run of core elements ending with the URL.

8th edition vs. 9th edition

The 9th edition of the MLA Handbook (2021) keeps the core elements introduced in the 8th edition (2016) but adds substantially more guidance, examples, and reference chapters. The differences are mostly clarifications rather than rule changes.

Common mistakes to avoid

Adding a comma between author and page

MLA in-text citations use (Woolf 277) — no comma. Writers coming from APA often insert a comma out of habit; that's an APA convention, not MLA.

Italicizing the wrong thing

Stand-alone works (books, films, journals, websites, albums) are italicized. Component works (articles, chapters, episodes, songs, web pages) take quotation marks. A common slip is italicizing an article title or putting a journal in quotation marks.

Listing the wrong "author"

For audiovisual works, the author is whoever your discussion centers on. If you can't justify a single author, lead with the title — that's always a valid choice in MLA 9.

Confusing volume and issue labels

MLA uses vol. and no. with periods and lowercase letters, not Vol. or No. The page range uses pp. for journal articles and book chapters.

Forgetting the second container

When you find an article through a database, the database is the second container — list it after the journal information. Leaving out JSTOR, Project MUSE, or ProQuest hides where the reader would actually retrieve the source.

Hanging indent

Every Works Cited entry uses a hanging indent: the first line is flush left and subsequent lines are indented 0.5 inches. Many word processors will apply this automatically once you select the entries and apply the "Hanging" paragraph option.

Quick summary

Once you understand the core elements and the container concept, MLA becomes one of the simplest citation styles to apply consistently. The same nine slots, in the same order, work for a Shakespeare quarto and a TikTok video alike — you just leave out what isn't there.