Citing other MLA sources?
The full MLA 9 Citation Generator handles books, websites, journals, videos, and more.
Got a PDF and not sure how to cite it? Paste the URL or article title — we identify what's actually inside (journal article, report, e-book, government doc) and render the right MLA 9 Works Cited entry. Free, no signup.
Tip: A DOI is the most reliable input. For undated PDFs (reports, lecture handouts), include any author or org you can identify.
There is no special "PDF" entry type in MLA 9 — and there shouldn't be. A PDF is just a delivery format, not a kind of source. The first job when citing a PDF is to figure out what's inside the file: is it a journal article, a government report, a chapter from a book, a conference paper, a court filing, a lecture handout? Once you know the source type, you cite it normally, and add the URL to the PDF at the end as the location element.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. 2nd ed., HHS, 2018, health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-09/Physical_Activity_Guidelines_2nd_edition.pdf.
Vaswani, Ashish, et al. "Attention Is All You Need." Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 30, 2017, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762.
Class handout or Unpublished manuscript in your Works Cited entry.Use the standard slot template: Author. "Title of source." Title of container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location. The Location slot is where the PDF URL goes. Drop the https:// protocol (MLA 9 prefers the bare URL form) — except when using a DOI, which always keeps the full https://doi.org/… form.
The in-text format follows whatever the source actually is. Journal articles get (Author Page); books and long reports get (Author Page) as well; web reports without page numbers can use a shortened title or paragraph number if needed: (HHS par. 3). PDFs have page numbers, so use them — that's the main advantage of citing the PDF version over a webpage.
(Vaswani et al. 6000)
If you downloaded the PDF from a database, MLA 9's two-container model lets you add the database as a second container after the journal: … vol. 58, no. 2, 2023, pp. 215–34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/12345. If the article has a DOI, you can use the DOI instead of the database URL — DOIs resolve to whichever platform currently hosts the paper. For database-hosted PDFs with no DOI, the database URL is fine.
Lots of PDFs (lecture notes, draft reports, internal memos) have no publication date. MLA 9's rule: skip the date slot and add an access date at the end. … www.example.edu/handout.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2026. If the PDF has a "last modified" or "revised" date on the cover page or in the file metadata, prefer that over an access date.
No. MLA 9 dropped the "medium" element years ago (MLA 8 removed it from MLA 7). The URL ending in .pdf already tells the reader what it is. You only add a format descriptor when the source isn't a standard publication — e.g., Microsoft Word file for an unpublished draft, or Class handout for a teacher-distributed PDF without a publisher.
https:// in a PDF URL. MLA 9 wants the bare form, except for DOIs.Paste a PDF URL and we open the document, read its embedded metadata (title, author, date, DOI when present), and look for the source type by checking the title page format. For PDFs with a DOI, we resolve it through Crossref to get authoritative metadata. The CSL engine renders MLA 9 formatting matched to the actual source type — article, report, book chapter, etc. — and the matching in-text citation comes alongside.
No. MLA 9 doesn't treat PDF as a source type — it's a delivery format. You cite the underlying source (journal article, report, book chapter, etc.) using its normal entry form and put the PDF's URL (or the article's DOI) in the location slot. PDF as a label disappeared when MLA dropped the "medium" element.
First check whether an organization is the author — for government reports, NGO documents, and white papers, the publishing org is almost always the author. If genuinely no author, skip the author slot and start with the title in italics (for stand-alone works like reports) or quotation marks (for shorter pieces). In-text, use a shortened title: (Physical Activity Guidelines 14).
Skip the publication date slot and add an access date at the very end: … www.example.edu/handout.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2026. Check the PDF's first or last page for a "last modified" or "version" date before defaulting to access date — many PDFs have one buried in a footer.
The PDF itself, almost always. The PDF is the actual source — the linking page is just navigation. The exception is if the linking page contains context or commentary you're also referencing (e.g., a news article that introduces a leaked memo). In that case, cite both as separate entries.
If it's a journal article, use the standard journal-article format and add the database as a second container: Author. "Title." Journal, vol. X, no. Y, year, pp. X–Y. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/12345. If there's a DOI, use that instead of the database URL. For non-article PDFs hosted in a database (reports, primary sources), cite the document itself and add the database URL at the end.
Cite it as a book chapter, not as a PDF: Author. "Chapter Title." Book Title, edited by Editor, Publisher, year, pp. X–Y. Don't include the URL — readers should be able to find the print version. If you absolutely need to point readers to the scan (e.g., a library reserve), add the URL after the page range.
The full MLA 9 Citation Generator handles books, websites, journals, videos, and more.
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