In-text citations
- Author-page, no comma: (Morrison 84)
- Author named in your sentence: Morrison writes that... (84)
- Two authors: (Chen and Ali 112). Three or more: (Chen et al. 112)
- No page numbers, as with many web sources: (Morrison)
- Two works by one author: (Morrison, Beloved 84)
The container system
MLA 9 builds every entry from the same elements in the same order, skipping any that do not apply. Learn the order and you can cite anything.
Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.Common Works Cited entries
Book:
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Knopf, 1987.
Journal article in a database:
Chen, Wei, and Nadia Ali. "Reading Aloud in the Composition Classroom." College Composition, vol. 71, no. 2, 2020, pp. 108-27. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1000/cc.2020.108.
Web page:
Nguyen, Linh. "Why Close Reading Still Matters." The Rhetoric Review, 4 Mar. 2023, www.rhetoricreview.org/close-reading.
Chapter in an edited collection:
Ako, Grace. "Voice and Register." Teaching Style, edited by Peter Lam, Harbour Press, 2021, pp. 33-49.Formatting a paper in MLA
- Double spaced, 12pt legible font, 1 inch margins
- No title page by default: name, instructor, course, date at the top left of page one
- Header with your surname and page number, top right
- Works Cited on a new page, alphabetised, hanging indent
- Quotations over four lines are set as block quotes, indented half an inch, no quotation marks
Key takeaways
- In-text is author and page with no comma between them
- Build Works Cited entries from the MLA element order
- MLA papers usually have no separate title page
- Block-quote anything longer than four lines of prose