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MLA referencing (9th ed.)

03 June 2026

The Modern Language Association (MLA) citation style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources in the liberal arts and humanities.

HOW TO APPLY

The MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. The following examples are based on the MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021).

MLA uses a two-part system of citation:

  1. In-text citations: short parenthetical citations, embedded within the text of the essay itself.
  2. A “Works Cited” list that follows up these references with fuller details of the sources, in an alphabetically ordered list. This includes both primary and secondary texts you used in writing your assignment. All entries in the Works Cited page must correspond to the works cited in your main text.

The usual information included in an in-text citation is (Author’s surname and page number), or just (page number) if the author is named in the sentence. No commas and/or ‘p.’ or ‘pg’ are needed. The reference appears in brackets at the end of the sentence that contains the quotation from or reference to your source. Punctuation comes after the citation. A full reference to the resource should then be included in the Works Cited page at the end of the essay. For example:

  • Author mentioned in text: Jones emphasises this point (156-7).
  • Author mentioned only in reference: This point has been emphasised (Jones 156-7).
  • Material found in indirect source: Greenwood supports this view (in Jones 66).

With some electronic sources, you will have page numbers to refer to (especially PDF format files), but if the source isn’t paginated, don’t worry about providing page numbers in the in-text citation for that source. Instead, you may include section (sect./sects.), chapter (ch./chs.) or paragraph (par./pars.) numbers if they are given in the source. If the author’s name is not mentioned in your prose, include the name in the citation followed by a comma, e.g.

There is little evidence here for the claim that “Eagleton has belittled the gains of postmodernism” (Chan, par. 41).

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference, like so (00:02:15-00:02:35).

If you are dealing with more than one source by the same author, include a short version of the title of the text within the citation to help distinguish between the sources. For example:

“Montaigne’s understanding of the potential for barbarity within “civilisation” is portrayed, for instance, in examining the relative associations with ostentatious transport (“Of Coaches” 439-45), perfume and cosmetics used to cover commonplace stench (“Of Smells” 213) and the primitive understanding of medicine in the France of his day (“Of Experience” 520-22).”

Your essay should conclude with a Works Cited list (a full list of works consulted):

  • The first line of each entry should have a hanging indent.
  • Entries should consist of as many of the following core elements as appropriate, in the recommended order of:
    Author, Title of source, Title of container (e.g. journal, database, website, etc.), Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.
  • Entries are listed alphabetically by the author’s last name (or, for entire edited collections, editor names). Author names are written as Last name, First name (or initial) any middle names or additional initials. For example Smith, Alison M.
  • If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, order the entries alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the author’s name for subsequent entry.
  • If there is no author, place the item by the first letter of its title, ignoring ‘A’ ‘An’ and ‘The’.
  • Titles of whole books, plays, films and artworks should be in italics. In the context of using EndNote, this style is referred to as MLA-italics.
  • Titles of chapters, articles, essays and poems that are part of longer works should be in “quotation marks” with no italics.
  • ‘Title case’ should be used, i.e. capitalise each word in the titles of articles, books, etc., but do not capitalise articles (the, an), prepositions or conjunctions unless one is the first word of the title or subtitle: Gone with the Wind, The Art of War, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

Books with one author

Winterson, Jeanette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.

Books with two authors

Reverse the name of the first author only.

Kuiper, Koenraad, and W. Scott Allan. An Introduction to English Language: Word, Sound, and Sentence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Books with three or more authors

The name of the first author should be given, followed by et al. (‘and others’), e.g. Quirk, Randolph, et al.
OR
give all names in full, in the order in which they appear on the title page.

Edition of a book

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004.

Book prepared by an editor

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Edited by Claudia Johnson, Norton, 2001.

Translated Book

Hildegard of Bingen. Selected Writings. Translated by Mark Atherton, Penguin, 2001.

Book with a corporate author

Use the institution or organisation as the author, unless the institution is also the publisher when the title comes first.

United Nations. Consequences of Rapid Population Growth in Developing Countries. Taylor and Francis, 1991.

State of World Population 2015: Shelter from the Storm: A Transformative Agenda for Women and Girls in a Crisis-Prone World. United Nations Population Fund, 2015.

Book with no author

Use the title of the book.

The New English Bible. Oxford UP, 1972.

Entire online book

Give the publication information for the original book. Add the electronic publication information where available, e.g. date of electronic publication. Include the full URL or DOI. Including the date of access for online resources is optional in MLA 9th edition; it is recommended for pages that may change frequently or that do not have a copyright/publication date.

Nesbit, Edith. Ballads and Lyrics of Socialism. The Fabian Society, 1908. Victorian Women Writers Project. 4 Oct. 2010. https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7021. Accessed 31 Jan. 2026.

Frost, Robert. North of Boston. 2nd ed., Henry Holt and Co., 1915. Google Books, https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Rt4mI5SV_5wC.

Published conference proceedings

Proceeding of the Third Pan-Pacific Science Congress, Tokyo, October 30th – November 11th, 1926, Held Under the Auspices of the National Research Council of Japan, and through the Generosity of the Imperial Japanese Government. National Research Council of Japan, etc. Tokyo, 1929.

Essay published in a collection

Mancoff, Debra N. “To Take Excalibur: King Arthur and the Construction of Victorian Manhood.” King Arthur: A Casebook, edited by Edward D. Kennedy, Garland, 1996, pp. 257-80.

Work in an anthology

Wendt, Albert. “The Balloonfish and the Armadillo.” The Picador Book of Contemporary New Zealand Fiction, edited by Fergus Barrowman, Picador, 1966, pp. 153-69.

 

Introduction, forward or preface

Drabble, Margaret. Introduction to Middlemarch, by George Eliot. Bantam, 1985, pp. vii-xvii.

 

Multi-volume sets

Citing a specific volume within a multi-volume set:

Damrosch, David, et al. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. vol. 2. Pearson Education, 2009.

 

Citing the whole multi-volume set:

Ruskin, John. The Works of John Ruskin. Edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, George Allen, 1903-12. 39 vols.

Part of an online book

Lee, Hermione. “Salman Rushdie’s Fathers.” The Contemporary British Novel, edited by James Acheson and Sarah Ross, Edinburgh UP, 2005, pp. 95-105. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/canterbury/detail.action?docID=264948. Accessed 31 Jan. 2026.

Enclose the title of the article in quotation marks. Italicise the title of the journal. Issue numbers are only needed if the part numbers are individually paginated. Use lowercase capitalisation for seasons in journal references, e.g. spring, summer, fall, winter.

Journal article

Mayer, Jed. “Germinating Memory: Hardy and Evolutionary Biology.” Victorian Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 2000, pp. 82-97.

 

Reprinted article

Barnard, Rita. “Dream Topographies: J.M. Coetzee and the South African Pastoral.” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 1, 1994, pp. 33-58. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey Hunter, vol. 117. Gale, 1999, pp. 65-74.

MLA regards generative AI as a tool that “can analyze or summarize content from a huge set of information, including web pages, books and other writing available on the internet, and use that data to create original new content” (Weed).

You should cite a generative AI tool whenever you paraphrase, quote or incorporate into your own work any content (whether text, image, data or other) that was created by it. All functional uses of generative AI should also be acknowledged, for example in editing your prose or translating words.

In-text citation examples

Paraphrasing in your prose:

While the green light in The Great Gatsby might be said to chiefly symbolise four main things: optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed and covetousness (“Describe the symbolism”), arguably the most important—the one that ties all four themes together—is greed.

Quoting AI generated text directly:

When asked to describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby, ChatGPT noted that it lacked “the ability to conduct research or cite sources independently” but that it could “provide a list of scholarly sources related to the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” (“In 200 words”).

Works Cited entries

Works Cited entries should follow this basic format:

“Prompt”. Name of AI tool, version, Name of company, date, URL.

For example:

“Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

“In 200 words, describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” follow-up prompt to list sources. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 9 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.

Work Cited

Weed, Julie. “Can ChatGPT Plan Your Vacation?” The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/travel/chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-travel-vacation.html.

Paintings, sculpture and most forms of visual arts (but not buildings)

Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Film, DVD or video recording

The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring. Directed by Peter Jackson et al, 2001. Special extended DVD edition, New Line Home Entertainment, 2002.

 

Broadcast

“The Blessing Way.” The X-Files. Fox, WXIA, Atlanta, 19 Jul. 1998.

 

Netflix/Google Play

“94 Meetings.” Parks and Recreation, season 2, episode 21, NBC, 29 Apr. 2010. Netflix, http://www.netflix.com/watch/70152031.

If it is necessary to cite from a lecture, your in-text citation would follow the standard form, and you’d have two possibilities for the bibliography citation, depending on whether you are citing the lecture as delivered or the lecture in note form (for example archived on LEARN).

Examples of a lecture and the lecture notes online:

Armstrong, Philip. “Humanism and the Rise of the Essay (II).” U of Canterbury, 2 March 2012.

Or

Armstrong, Philip. “Humanism and the Rise of the Essay (II).” U of Canterbury, 2 March 2012. Lecture. ENGL201, The Essay and Beyond. AKO | LEARN website. U of Canterbury, 2012. Accessed 3 Feb. 2017.

See the UC English Department Essay Writing Guide for more information on whether or not you need to provide citations when using material derived from lectures.

Frequently updated, well-known reference title: brief

“Noon.” Def. 4b. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd. ed., 1989.

This also illustrates the choice of one particular definition.

Specialised or lesser known reference title in full:

“Epic.” Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. Oxford UP, 2003.

Article from an online encyclopedia

“Canterbury Tales, The.” The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford UP, 2000. Oxford Reference Online, http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192806871.001.0001/acref-9780192806871-e-1296?rskey=1arK62&result=3.

Entry from the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online

“magazine, n.” OED Online. 3rd ed, Dec. 2016. Oxford UP, 2017, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/112144?rskey=8t7TQ6&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid. Accessed 3 Feb. 2017.

Note: the first date is the OED entry date, the second is the access date.

 

Entry from Grove Music Online

When you are reading an article, click the orange Cite button at the top of the page to generate the reference in the MLA style.

Talbot, Michael. “Vivaldi, Antonio.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford UP, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40120pg8.

Follow the examples below for material on AKO | LEARN that were never published independently.

Electronic reading on AKO | LEARN

Algarotti, Francesco. An Essay on the Opera. AKO | LEARN website, uploaded by Rachel Ross, 1 May 2021, http://learn.canterbury.ac.nz/mod/coursereadings/view.php?id=266146. Accessed 13 Jan. 2015.

Paper copy of a single reading

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” ENGL117, Writing the Academic Essay, compiled by Anne Smith, May 2015, University of Canterbury.

Entire website

Felluga, Dino Franco. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. Purdue U, 28 Nov. 2003, http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2017.

Web page example (no date given)

Hollmichel, Stephanie. “The Reading Brain: Differences between Digital and Print.” So Many Books, http://somanybooksblog.com/2013/04/25/the-reading-brain-differences-between-digital-and-print/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2019.

Whenever you can, take material from the original source, not from a second-hand source. If you need to use indirect quotations or to paraphrase an indirect source, use “qtd. in” to indicate the source that you consulted.

In text: Jones claimed that runners who “drank regularly usually stopped running after a few months” (qtd. in Salazar 212).

Works Cited: Cite Salazar.

Further information
 

MLA Handbook Plus – online access to the MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021).

More information and examples are available at The MLA Style Centre or Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab.

NoodleTools Express: MLA is a useful citation tool.

Download the MLA 9th Quick Guide

Download (application/pdf, 245 KB)
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