General guidelines for the MLA works cited list

General guidelines for the MLA works cited list

In the list of works cited, include only sources that you have quoted, summarized, or paraphrased in your paper.

Authors and titles

  • Arrange the list alphabetically by authors’ last names or by titles for works without authors.
  • Invert the first author’s name (place the last name first, a comma, and the first name). If the source has other authors, put their names in normal order (first name followed by last name).
  • In titles of works, capitalize all words except articles (a, an, the), prepositions (to, from, between, at, 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 around titles of articles and other short works.
  • Italicize titles of books and other long works.

Place of publication and publisher

  • For sources that require a place of publication, give the city of publication without a state or country name.
  • Shorten publishers’ names, usually to the first principal word (“Wiley” for “John Wiley and Sons,” for instance). Use the abbreviations “U” and “P” for “University” and “Press” in the names of university publishers: UP of Florida.
  • If a work has two publishers, give the city and name for both (in the order listed on the title page), separated with a semicolon.
  • List a sponsor or a publisher for most sources from the Web, usually immediately after the Web site title.
  • If a source has no sponsor or publisher, use the abbreviation “N.p.” (for “No publisher”).
  • Do not give a sponsor for a work found in a database; the title of the database is sufficient.

Dates

  • For a print source, give the most recent date on the title page or the copyright page.
  • For a source found on the Web, use the copyright date or the most recent update.
  • For books and for most journals, use the year of publication.
  • For monthly magazines, use the month and the year. Abbreviate all months except May, June, and July.
  • For weekly magazines and newspapers, give the day, month, and year in that order, with no commas (18 Feb. 2013). Abbreviate all months except May, June, and July.
  • If there is no date of publication or update, use “n.d.” (for “no date”).
  • For sources found on the Web or in a database, provide the date you accessed the source, usually at the end of the entry.

Page numbers

  • For most articles and other short works, give page numbers when they are available.
  • If page numbers are not available in the source (as is often the case with sources found on the Web), use the abbreviation “n. pag.” (for “no pagination”) in place of page numbers.
  • Do not use the page numbers from a printout of a source—different printers will paginate the work differently, so the page numbers are not stable.
  • For articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers, if the work does not appear on consecutive pages, give the number of the first page followed by a plus sign: 35+.

Medium

  • Include the medium in which a work was published, produced, or delivered.
  • Capitalize the medium, but do not italicize it or put it in quotation marks.
  • Typical designations for the medium are “Print,” “Web,” “Radio,” “Television,” “CD,” “Film,” “DVD,” “Photograph,” “Performance,” “Lecture,” “MP3 file,” and “PDF file.”

URLs

  • MLA guidelines assume that readers can locate most Web sources by entering the author, title, or other identifying information in a search engine or a database. Consequently, the MLA Handbook does not require a URL (Web address) in citations for online sources.
  • Some instructors may require a URL; for an example, see the note at the end of item 47.