MLA Handbook, 9th edition

MLA citation generator

Build an MLA 9 Works Cited entry and its in-text citation from a DOI, an ISBN or details you type. It runs in your browser and asks for no sign-up.

  • Free, no account needed
  • Auto-fill from a DOI or ISBN
  • Copies with italics
Authors (in the order the source lists them; leave empty if there is none)

MLA 9 expects title case here. We never change your capitalisation on our own. The convert buttons cannot recognise names, so re-capitalise proper nouns afterwards.

The site the page belongs to, for example Mayo Clinic.

Date published or updated (leave empty if none is shown)
Date you accessed it

Works Cited entry

Fill in the details above and your citation appears here as you type.

In-text citation

Fill in the details above and your citation appears here as you type.

MLA uses title case for all titles and leaves http:// or https:// off URLs. An access date is added only when a page has no date. A video entry starts with its title and names the channel after “uploaded by”. For a source with no author, shorten the title in your in-text citation.

Works Cited (0)

Sources you add appear here in MLA 9 format, in alphabetical order. The list is kept in this browser only.

Check every citation against your source and your instructor’s guidelines before you submit.

The rules

MLA format: how the citations work

MLA pairs a brief author-and-page citation in your sentence with a full entry in the Works Cited list. Every entry is assembled from one template of core elements.

In-text: author and page

  • Give the author’s last name and the page, with nothing between them: (Gleick 33). No comma, no “p.”, no year.
  • If your sentence already names the author, only the page goes in the parentheses: Gleick makes the same point (33).
  • Two authors: (Crowley and Hawhee 120). Three or more: the first name and “et al.”: (Wysocki et al. 15).
  • Most web pages and videos have no page numbers. Cite the author alone, (Lundman), and do not count pages from a printout. For audio or video you can give a time stamp instead.
  • With no author, use a shortened form of the title: in quotation marks for an article, page or video, in italics for a book.
  • The citation sits inside the sentence, before the final period.

Works Cited entries: the core elements

  • Follow one order for every source: Author. Title of source. Title of container, contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location. Skip any element the source does not have.
  • A container is the larger work that holds your source: the journal for an article, the website for a page, YouTube for a video. It is italic and followed by a comma.
  • Invert the first author only: Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. For three or more authors, give the first and “et al.”
  • Use title case for every title. Put short works (articles, pages, videos) in “quotation marks” and long ones (books, journals, sites) in italics.
  • Write dates as day month year and abbreviate every month except May, June and July: 6 June 2016, 3 Feb. 2006.
  • Label the numbers: vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 595–600. Give a DOI as https://doi.org/…; otherwise give the URL without http:// or https://. Leave out the city of publication.

Formatting the Works Cited page

  • Start a new page at the end of the paper. Center the heading Works Cited in plain type: not bold, not italic, not underlined. With a single source, the heading is Work Cited.
  • Double-space everything and indent the second and later lines of each entry by 0.5 in (a hanging indent).
  • Alphabetize by whatever comes first in the entry. That is usually the author’s last name; with no author it is the title, ignoring A, An and The.
  • For a second work by the same author, replace the name with three hyphens and a period.
  • An access date is optional. Add one for a page with no date or one that is likely to change: Accessed 6 July 2015.

What the generator does and does not do

  • A journal article can be filled in from its DOI and a book from its ISBN. A website or video cannot be filled in from its link, so you type those details.
  • Titles are printed as you type them. The “Convert to Title Case” button helps, but check small words and proper nouns after using it.
  • A video entry always starts with the title and names the channel after “uploaded by”. If the creator is someone other than the uploader, MLA puts the creator first, and you add that by hand.
  • Page ranges are printed with an en dash and are not shortened. MLA writes 127–53 rather than 127–153, so type the range the way you want it. A hyphen is also accepted in student papers.
  • For a source with no author, the in-text citation shows the whole title. Shorten it to the first few words yourself.
  • An access date is printed only when the page has no publication date.

These rules follow the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook (2021). It keeps the template of core elements that the 8th edition introduced, so an entry that was correct in MLA 8 is almost always correct in MLA 9.

Examples

MLA Works Cited and in-text examples

Each entry is what the generator on this page produces. The sources are the samples from Purdue OWL’s MLA guide, so you can check them against a reference you already know.

  • Book

    One author

    Works Cited
    Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1987.
    Quoting page 33
    (Gleick 33)

  • Book, later edition

    Two authors, third edition

    Works Cited
    Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004.
    Quoting page 120
    (Crowley and Hawhee 120)

  • Book with three or more authors

    Four authors, shortened to et al.

    Works Cited
    Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.
    Quoting page 15
    (Wysocki et al. 15)

  • Journal article

    In print and online, with page numbers

    Works Cited
    Wheelis, Mark. “Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 6, no. 6, 2000, pp. 595–600, wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/6/00-0607_article.
    Quoting page 596
    (Wheelis 596)

  • Online-only journal article

    No page numbers

    Works Cited
    Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/60/362.
    In-text
    (Dolby)

  • Web page

    No publication date shown

    Works Cited
    Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html.
    With an access date
    Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html. Accessed 6 July 2015.
    In-text
    (Lundman)

  • YouTube video

    Starts with the title; the channel follows “uploaded by”

    Works Cited
    “8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test.” YouTube, uploaded by Crazy Russian Hacker, 6 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBlpjSEtELs.
    In-text (shorten it)
    (“8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test”)

OWL types a hyphen in the page range of the Wheelis article (595-600) where the generator prints an en dash. MLA accepts either in student work. The second web page entry adds an access date, which OWL treats as optional. Otherwise the entries match OWL’s, apart from curly quotation marks.

Before you submit

Common MLA citation mistakes

Mistakes to check for

  • Putting a comma or “p.” in the in-text citation: (Gleick, p. 33) should be (Gleick 33).
  • Adding the year to the in-text citation. That is APA, not MLA.
  • Writing titles in sentence case. MLA capitalizes the main words of every title.
  • Leaving https:// at the front of a URL.
  • Giving the city of publication, or ending the entry with “Print” or “Web”. Both are from MLA 7.
  • Leaving out the container, so a web page has no site name or an article has no journal.
  • Calling the list “Bibliography” or “References”, or setting the heading in bold.
  • Listing every author when there are three or more.

When to use MLA style

MLA style comes from the Modern Language Association and is the usual choice for writing about literature, language and culture. In the United States it is also the first style most students meet, in high school English and first-year composition.

  • English and comparative literature
  • Modern languages and cultural studies
  • Film, theater and media studies
  • High school and first-year writing classes
How it works

Create MLA citations in three steps

The tool above is preset to MLA 9th edition. Nothing is uploaded and you do not need an account.

  1. Select the kind of source

    Book, journal article, website or online video. MLA treats them all with the same template; the form just asks for the right elements.

  2. Enter the elements

    Use an ISBN or DOI look-up where you have one. Otherwise type the author, title, container, date and URL. Type titles in title case and paste the URL as it is: the tool removes https:// for you.

  3. Copy into your Works Cited

    Copy the entry with its italics, and the in-text citation with the page you are quoting. Save each source to the list and copy the whole list in alphabetical order.

Check every entry against the source before you hand in your paper. Looked-up records can carry a publisher name or title capitalization that MLA would write differently, and the tool does not change your titles for you.

FAQ

MLA citation questions

It is a reference written in the style of the Modern Language Association. It has two linked parts: a short citation in your text with the author’s last name and a page number, and a full entry for the same source in the Works Cited list at the end of the paper.

Build your MLA reference list

MLA 9 entries and in-text citations, ready to paste. Free, with no account.