General guidelines for the MLA works cited list

The elements of a works cited entry are organized into what MLA calls “containers”: journals or magazines, collections (anthologies), websites, databases, and so on.

The elements, or pieces of information, needed for a works cited entry are the following:

• The author (if a work has one)
• The title
• The title of the larger work in which the source is located (the “container”) — a collection, a journal, a magazine, a website, and so on
• As much of the following information as is available about the source and the container, listed in this order:
  • Editor, translator, director, performer
  • Version or edition
  • Volume and issue numbers
  • Publisher
  • Date of publication
  • Location of the source: page numbers, DOI, URL, and so on

• Arrange the works cited list alphabetically by authors’ last names or by titles for works with no authors.
• For the first author, place the last name first, a comma, and the first name. Put a second author’s name in normal order (first name followed by last name). For three or more authors, use "et al." after the first author’s name.
• Use a period at the end of the last author’s name (or after a label such as “editor” or “translator”).
• Spell out “editor,” “translator,” “edited by,” and so on.

• In titles of works, capitalize all words except articles (a, an, the), prepositions (at, between, from, under, and so on), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet), and the to in infinitives — unless the word is first or last in the title or subtitle.
• Use quotation marks for titles of articles and other short works.
• Italicize titles of books and other long works.

• The elements of publication information are separated by commas, with a period at the end.
• Do not give the place of publication for a book publisher.
• Use the complete version of publishers’ names, except for terms such as “Inc.” and “Company”; retain terms such as “Books,” “Press,” and “Publishers”: Alfred A. Knopf; Penguin Books. For university publishers, use “U” and “P” for “University” and “Press”: UP of Florida.
• Take the name of the publisher from the title page or copyright page of a print publication or from the bottom of a page or the “About” page of a website. If a work has two or more publishers, separate the names with slashes.
• If the title of a website and the publisher are the same or similar, use the title of the site but omit the publisher.

• For a print source, give the most recent date on the title page or the copyright page.
• For a web source, use the copyright date or the most recent update date.
• For books, use the year of publication. For other works (journals, newspapers, web sources), give the complete date as listed in the source.
• Abbreviate all months except May, June, and July and give the date in inverted form: 13 Mar. 2016.
• If the source has no date or if the date of access is significant for your project, give the date of access at the end of the entry: Accessed 24 Feb. 2016.

• For most articles and other short works, give page numbers when they are available, preceded by “p.” (or “pp.” for more than one page).
• Do not use the page numbers from a printout of a source.
• If an article does not appear on consecutive pages, give the number of the first page followed by a plus sign: 35+.

• Some sources, particularly those from databases, include a stable identifier called a permalink or a DOI (digital object identifier). Use that identifier, if a source has one, in your works cited entry.
• If a source does not have a permalink or a DOI, include a URL (omitting the protocol, such as http://).
• If a database provides only a URL that is long and complicated and if your readers are not likely to be able to access it, your instructor may allow you to use the URL for the database home page (such as go.galegroup.com). Check with your instructor.
• For open databases and archives, such as Google Books, give the complete URL for the source.
• If a URL or a DOI must be divided across lines, break it before a period or a hyphen or before or after any other mark of punctuation. Do not add a hyphen. If you will post your project online or submit it electronically and you want your readers to click on your URLs, do not insert any line breaks.