Need a different style?
The full Citation Generator covers APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, AMA, ACS, IEEE, Vancouver, and the 10,000+ other styles in the CSL registry.
Paste a DOI, URL, or ISBN. Get a fully formatted Works Cited entry in MLA 8th edition — the original container model, full first names, title-case titles, and the right punctuation throughout. The matching (Author Page) in-text comes back with it. Free, no signup.
Tip: Paste a URL, DOI, or ISBN for automatic metadata lookup.
MLA 8 was published in 2016 and introduced the container model that still drives MLA today. The shift was philosophical: instead of giving every source type its own template (book, journal article, film, website), MLA 8 unified everything around a single principle — a source lives inside one or more containers, and the citation walks through each container's metadata. MLA 9 (2021) refined the same model. MLA 8 is still accepted on older syllabi and in some institutional thesis programs.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. McClelland and Stewart, 1985.
MLA 8 uses author-page in-text: (Author Page). No comma, no "p.". Two authors get (Smith and Jones 14); three or more collapse to (Smith et al. 14). Sources without page numbers fall back to author only or to paragraph numbers introduced with par..
(Atwood 142)
Works Cited entries hang-indent half an inch. List author, title of source, then the container (journal, book, website) in italics, then the container's contributors, version, number, publisher, date, and location. Article titles in quotation marks; container titles italicized. Page ranges use an en-dash with truncation after three digits: 1124–31.
Each input goes through the right source. DOIs hit Crossref directly, since that's where they're registered. ISBNs resolve through library and publisher records. URLs get scraped for embedded metadata (DOI in the source, OG tags, schema.org). If nothing's there, we fall back to Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Once the canonical record lands, the CSL engine renders the citation in MLA 8. That's the same engine Zotero and Mendeley run, the same one behind most journal submission portals.
MLA 9 is the current edition, but MLA 8 is still accepted on older syllabi, in long-running thesis programs that locked in MLA 8 as the standard, and on assignments updated before 2021. The container model is identical between the two editions — most students who learned MLA 8 don't need to relearn anything for MLA 9.
MLA 7 (2009) used separate templates for each source type. MLA 8 (2016) replaced that with a single container model: list author, source title, container, contributors, version, number, publisher, date, location — in that order, for any source. MLA 8 also dropped the "Print" / "Web" medium tags MLA 7 required.
Every source lives inside one or more containers. A journal article's container is the journal. A book chapter's container is the book. A TV episode's container is the series; the streaming platform is a second container. The Works Cited entry walks through each container's metadata in fixed order.
Yes, for online sources that don't have a DOI. MLA 8 introduced the requirement to include URLs (MLA 7 had made them optional). Drop the http:// if you prefer; keep the rest of the URL intact.
Author and page number, no comma, no "p.": (Atwood 142). Two authors use "and." Three+ use et al.. The format is identical in MLA 9.
If your instructor or journal accepts either, MLA 9 is the safer default. Both editions follow the same container model, so the difference for most papers is small. If you started in MLA 8 and your assignment doesn't specify, stick with what you have.
The full Citation Generator covers APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, AMA, ACS, IEEE, Vancouver, and the 10,000+ other styles in the CSL registry.
Already wrote your references in another style? Drop the list into the Citation Converter to reformat the whole bibliography in one click.
Got a reference and want to check it? Run it through the AI Citation Checker to confirm the source exists and the metadata matches.
Have a sentence but no citation? The Find Source tool searches Crossref, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, OpenAlex, and PubMed for supporting peer-reviewed papers.
Save every MLA 8 citation you generate to your Works Cited library, then export the finished list to Word, BibTeX, or RIS.
Run the final draft through the Writing Assistant to check grammar, clarity, and academic tone before submitting.