ENGL 105, Academic Writing: MLA Style

The library's research databases will help you format sources you find while searching them, but they will not help you with other sources. These tools can help you format your references in MLA style. Select the resource type, enter your data, and get a formatted citation that you can paste into your bibliography.

Caveat: These citation machines are not perfect - they are only as good as the data you feed them. You will still need to proofread your references - use the basic rules above to catch the most common mistakes.

The following is a summary of the basic rules for MLA citations.

Author Names

• use the author's full name, e.g., Public, John Q., not Public, J. Q. or Public, J.
• invert only the first author's name, not any of the others
• cite author names in the same order as they're listed on the document
• include up to 3 authors; if there are additional authors, use the first author's name and et al. ("and others")
• Editors names are not inverted

Make sure the date of publication is in the correct format

• for journals and books, give the year only, e.g., (2007)
• for magazines, newspapers, and web sites, include the full date as provided on the publication, e.g. (15 Nov. 2007)
• if there is no date of publication, indicate so with 'n.d.'

If there are no pages given, do not count unmarked paragraphs but if there are section numbers or the paragraphs are numbered, use par. or pars. for (paragraph or paragraphs) or sec. or secs. for (section or sections)

Titles

Watch for capitalization:

• journal (periodical) titles should be capitalized and italicized (e.g., Advertising Age; Journal of Contemporary Health Issues; The New York Times)
  • journal volume numbers should not be italicized
• all titles should be capitalized, except for the prepositions and conjunctions, e.g.
  • Electronic Arts Canada to Announce Third Quarter Results on December 20
  • Donut Wars: Can Anyone Catch Tim?
• put article titles in quotation marks
• italicize book titles (e.g., Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life)

Publisher

The name of the organization that makes the work available for you to see/use.

• for books, it is usually listed on the title page. Oxford UP, Toronto UP, UBC UP

Locations

Place of publication is no longer necessary. Instead just give the name of the publisher and the date of publication. (e.g., Oxford UP, 2016 or HarperCollins Publishers 1999)

For online documents or websites, give the url. If there is a doi for an online journal, use that rather than the url.

Sample Citations

Or try another video from OWL Purdue: