Poem Author(s). "Title of Poem." Title of Book: Subtitle If Any, edited by Editor's First Name Last Name [if any], Edition [if given], Publisher Name, Publication Year, pp. Poem Page Numbers.
Donne, John. "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, edited by Lisa Chalykoff, Neta Gordon, and Paul Lumsden, Broadview Press, 2013, pp. 48-49.
(Donne, lines 26-28)
Poem Author(s). "Title of Poem." Name of Journal, vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Publication Date, pp. Article Page Numbers. Name of Database, https://doi.org/DOI [if from library database].
Sharkey, Lee. "Thistle." About Place Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, Oct. 2018.
(Sharkey)
Poem Author(s). "Title of Poem." Title of Website, Website Publisher [if different from title], Date of Copyright or Last Update [if available], URL. Accessed Day Month Year.
Keats, John. "On the Grasshopper and Cricket." Poetry Foundation, 2020, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53210/on-the-grasshopper-and-cricket. Accessed 24 March 2020.
(Keats, lines 10-12)
Last Name, First Name
or
Last Name, First Name Middle Name or Initial (if provided in source)
Anzaldúa, Gloria
Kendi, Ibram X.
Wallace, David Foster
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 4th ed., Aunt Lute Books, 2012.
Last Name, First Name, and First Name Last Name
Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. Sage, 2005.
First Author's Last Name, First Name, et al.
Chan, Sabrina S., et al. Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationships, and Vocation. InterVarsity Press, 2022.
If the group author and the publisher are different entities, list the Group Name as the author.
Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. Employability Skills: Creating My Future. Nelson, 1996.
If the group author and the publisher are the same, skip the author and list the title first. Then, list the group author only as the publisher.
Fair Housing—Fair Lending. Aspen Law & Business, 1985.
If a source has no author, skip the author and start with the title. Do not use "Anonymous" as the author name.
"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.
(Last Name Page Number)
(Anzaldúa 30)
(First Author's Last Name and Second Author's Last Name Page Number)
(Wykes and Gunter 53)
(First Author's Last Name et al. Page Number)
(Chan et al. 97)
(Group Name Page Number)
(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation 230)
If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.
(Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work" Page Number)
(Fair Housing 15)
("How to Teach")
In-text citations for poetry will differ depending on what information is provided in the poem.
(Poet's Last Name, lines Line Numbers)
Example:
(Blake, lines 6-9)
Dates in your Works Cited list should be formatted like this: Day Month Year. Month names should be abbreviated using the list below.
Example: 17 Oct. 2021.
For publication dates, include as much information as the source provides. This may be a full date, only the month and year, a season (such as Spring 2019), or just a publication year.
In your Works Cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan.
February = Feb.
March = Mar.
April = Apr.
May = May
June = June
July = July
August = Aug.
September = Sept.
October = Oct.
November = Nov.
December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are unique numbers or hyperlinks assigned to some online resources, such as journal articles, to make them easier to find.
If a DOI is provided for a source, include it at the end of your citation after any page numbers. In your Works Cited list, you should always format a DOI as a URL beginning with "https://doi.org/" followed immediately by the DOI number.
Example: For DOI "10.5642/jhummath.20170120," the URL version would be: https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120
If no DOI is provided but a permalink or stable link is present, you can use that instead.
If a source is missing information that you need for your Works Cited citation, you can skip that element and move on to the next element in the citation.
Examples: Some sources don't have an author; in this case, we skip the author and start our citation with the title. Most academic journals are published in volumes and issues, but some only have volumes; in this case, we list the volume number and skip the issue number.
If you're not sure what type of source you're working with, don't worry! This is a very common challenge. Check out our page on Identifying Source Types.
Works Cited List: To cite two or more works by the same author, give the name in the first entry only. For subsequent works by the same author, replace the author's name with three hyphens followed by a period (---.), which signifies that the name is the same as the preceding entry. Alphabetize works with the same author by title.
In-Text Citations: To distinguish multiple works by the same author, add a comma followed by a shortened version of the title (usually the first 2-4 words) between the author name and the page number. Example: (Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera 38). Alternately, you can mention the author and title in the sentence, and then only include the page number.
If you are citing a single page, use "p." If you are citing multiple pages, use "pp."
Example: If an article runs from page 10 to page 15, your citation should say "pp. 10-15" because it covers multiple pages. If it's a short article that only appears on page 11, your citation should say "p. 11".
MLA Handbook 9th Edition
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Content is adapted from the CSUDH MLA Citation Guide and the Columbia College (BC) MLA Citation Guide. Icons courtesy of Icons8.