MLA Website Citation Generator

How to cite a website in MLA 9

MLA 9 builds every entry from the same template, the core elements: Author. "Title of source." Title of container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location. For a website, most slots are empty — you usually only fill in author, page title, site name, publication date, and URL. The container model is the part that throws people off; it's just MLA's way of saying "what bigger thing is this part of?" For a webpage, the container is the website.

Example MLA 9 website Works Cited entry

Mendelsohn, Daniel. "What Is Greek Tragedy For?" The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2023, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/what-is-greek-tragedy-for.

The five slots you actually fill in

• Author — last name first: Mendelsohn, Daniel. If the byline is an organization, use that name as written. No author? Skip the slot and start with the title.
• Title of source — the page title in quotation marks, title case ("What Is Greek Tragedy For?"). Note the period inside the closing quote.
• Title of container — the website name, italicized, comma after. Use the publication's own name as it brands itself: The New Yorker, not newyorker.com.
• Publication date — day-month-year, abbreviated month: 24 Mar. 2023. If only year is shown, use that.
• Location (URL) — drop the https:// for brevity (MLA 9 prefers the bare host: www.newyorker.com/…). End with a period.

In-text citation for a website

MLA's in-text format is author + locator: (Mendelsohn). Webpages have no page numbers, so just the author's surname is used. For the same author with multiple sources, add a shortened title in quotes: (Mendelsohn, "Greek Tragedy"). Organization as author? Shorten to a recognizable phrase: (World Health Organization) or just (WHO) after the first reference. No author at all? Use the shortened title: ("Climate Update").

(Mendelsohn)

The "Accessed [date]" rule in MLA 9

MLA 9 makes the access date optional but recommended — and required when no publication date is available. The format goes at the end after the URL: … www.example.com/page. Accessed 12 May 2026. Use it when the page is undated, when the page changes frequently (wikis, social profiles, live data), or when your instructor asks. Don't add it to a normal dated news article — the publication date is enough.

Site name vs. publisher (the trap)

For most websites, the site name is the publisher — The New York Times publishes nytimes.com. Don't repeat it. MLA 9 only asks for a separate publisher when the site is hosted by a different organization than the one that "owns" the content (e.g., a university hosts a personal academic page, or a museum hosts an exhibition catalog from another institution). For a normal news site, blog, or organizational page, leave the publisher slot empty.

Common MLA 9 website mistakes

• Don't include https:// in the URL. MLA 9 drops the protocol — start with www. or the bare host.
• Don't add "Accessed [date]" to every web source. Optional for dated pages, required for undated ones.
• Don't repeat the site name as both container and publisher. One slot only.
• Don't use sentence case for the page title. MLA uses title case (capitalize the major words).
• Don't translate publication dates to American format. MLA 9 uses day-month-year: 24 Mar. 2023.

How the generator works

Paste a URL and we read the page's metadata — Open Graph tags, schema.org JSON-LD, and standard <meta> author/date fields. That covers most news, blog, and journal landing pages. The CSL engine renders MLA 9 formatting: title-case page title in quotes, italicized site name, day-month-year date, bare URL with protocol stripped, optional access date when no publication date came back. The matching in-text (Author) citation comes alongside.