Cite Sources

MLA 8 has been superseded by MLA 9.  MLA 8 is included here as there may be those who are still using that style.

An in-text citation should point to a specific work in your list of works cited. There are a couple of ways you can handle this basic format:

Elsie B. Michie notes that in Mansfield Park, Austen seeks "to make the rich woman an attractive figure" (31).

It has been argued that in Mansfield Park, Austen seeks "to make the rich woman an attractive figure" (Michie, 31).

Both of these sentences are quoting the same passage, but the first acknowledges the author in the sentence itself and the second includes the author's name in the parentheses at the end instead.

Use your judgment to decide which of these in-text citation styles works better at a given point in your writing. If you plan to argue with or discuss a source at length, the first might be better. If you're just briefly quoting an opinion or a fact in passing, the second might be better.

If you're quoting a source that has no page numbers, you can't include page numbers - instead, list the author's name in parentheses.

If you're quoting a web source or a reference book, keep an eye out for the author's name. In many reference books, a chapter or an entry will include an attribution at the very end - see this Credo Reference article for an example. If I were citing this article, my in-text citation would be (Munford) and I would include a citation for this article in my Works Cited.

To cite a book in MLA 8 format, follow this basic pattern:

Author's last name, author's first name. Title of Book. Publisher, year.

All of this information should be available from the book itself. Check the title page and the copyright page if you're not sure where or when it was published.

Be sure to cite the edition you're actually looking at. For example:

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Bantam Classics,

         2006. [The book was originally published in 1811, but the edition we're looking at was published in 2006.]

Cite as much information about your copy of the book as possible. For example:

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alistair Fowler. 2nd ed.

         Longman, 1998. [This is an edition of Milton's Paradise Lost that was edited by Fowler.]

If a book has two authors, cite it this way:

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in

         the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-

          Century Literary Imagination. Yale University

          Press, 1979.

If a book has three or more authors, cite it this way:

Bloom, Harold, et al. Deconstruction and Criticism.

          Seabury Press, 1979.

If  a book is a translation, cite it this way:

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways.

         Translated by Lydia Davis, Viking, 2010.

If a book has an editor, cite it this way:

Widmer, Ted, editor. American Speeches: Political

        Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War. 

         Library of America, 2006.

A signed entry in a reference book:

Mendelson, Wallace. "Separation of Powers." The

           Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of

            the United States, edited by Kermit L. Hall.

            Oxford University Press, 1992.

An unsigned entry in a reference book:

"United States of America." The Statesman’s Yearbook

          2013, edited by Barry Turner. Palgrave Macmillan,

          2012.

Corporate authorship (publications by a group or organization, where an author is not named):

World Bank. World Development Indicators 2015.

          World Bank Publications, 2015. ebrary, 

           0-site.ebrary.com.libcat.uafs.edu/lib/uafs/detail.

           action?docID=11043528. [Here I'm including the publication information for this book because the online text is a straight reprint of the print edition, and I'm adding the fact that I read the book online through ebrary.]

A book that you read online:

Shaw, George Bernard. Heartbreak House. Project

           Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/3543/3543-

            h/3543-h.htm. [This is a reformatted e-text of the play.]

Jay, Martin. Songs of Experience: Modern American

           and European Variations on a Universal

           Theme. University of California Press, 2005.

           EBSCOhost, 0-search.ebscohost.com.

            libcat.uafs.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=

           nlebk&AN=129004.   [Here I'm including the publication information for this book because the online text is a straight reprint of the print edition, and I'm adding the fact that I read the book online through EBSCOhost.]

To cite a journal article in MLA format, follow this basic pattern:

Author's last name, author's first

         name. "Title of Article." Title

          of Journal, vol. [volume

          number], no. [issue

          number], year, pp. [pages]. For online sources, 

          Web source, DOI (or URL if a DOI isn't available)

If you viewed the article online (e.g. through a database), you should also cite the database and URL where you accessed it.

Here's an example of an article cited from a print journal:

Coviello, Peter. "Whitman's Children." PMLA, vol. 128,

             no. 1, 2013, pp. 73-86.

Here's an example of an article cited from a database:

May, Charles E. "The Short Story's Way of Meaning:

          Alice Munro's 'Passion.'" Narrative, vol. 20,

          no. 2, 2012, pp. 172-182. Academic Search

         Premier, 0-search.ebscohost.com.libcat.uafs.

         edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db

         =aph&AN=74971631.

Some articles that you read online may not have pagination - it's OK in cases like this to leave out the article's pagination. For example:

Joneson, Devan. "Mythic Mentor Figures and Liminal

         Sacred Spaces in Doctor Who and Battlestar

          Galactica." Inquire: Journal of Comparative

          Literature, vol. 3, no. 1, 2013. inquire.streetmag.

           org/articles/113.

To cite a chapter in an edited book, follow this format:

Author's last name, author's first name. "Title of

          Chapter." Title of Book, edited by [editor or

          editors], publisher, year, pp. [pages].

Norris, Margot. "Modernist Eruptions." The Columbia

        History of the American Novel, edited by Emory

        Elliott, Columbia University Press, 1991,

        pp. 311-330.

Follow a similar format for an item in an anthology:

Rich, Adrienne. "Women and Honor: Some Notes on

          Lying."  Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose,

         edited by Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and

          Albert Gelpi, Norton, 1993, pp. 195-203.

If you're citing an item in an anthology, you might also wish to document when it was originally published, if that information is available to you:

Rich, Adrienne. "Women and Honor: Some Notes on

            Lying." 1975. Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose,

           edited by Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert

           Gelpi, Norton, 1993, pp. 195-203.

When citing a website, the idea is to provide as much information as is available about the site. Here's the basic format to follow:

Author's last name, author's first

          name. "Title of the work." 

          Title of the website,

           publisher or sponsor, if there

           is one, date of publication, URL.

Here's how we would cite this blog post, for example:

Cohen, Micah. "Uncertainty Still Clouds Health Care

           Law." FiveThirtyEight. New York Times,

           1 May 2013, fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.

            com/2013/05/01/uncertainty-still-clouds-health-

            care-law.

Most reputable web sites will have at least some information along these lines. If you can't find any of the crucial information like author, publisher/sponsor, or date of publication, you might want to think about whether this is a source you should be using for your research in the first place.

A movie:

Director's last name, director's

        first name, director. Title of

        movie. Production company,

         year.

Hellman, Monte. Two-Lane

        Blacktop. Universal Pictures, 1971.

A YouTube video:

MLA doesn't provide specific guidance on how to cite YouTube. Depending on the information you have about the video, there are a couple of ways you could handle it. In this example, we know what organization created the video:

University of Arkansas - Fort Smith. "Quarters." 9 Oct.

          2012. Online video clip. YouTube. Web. Accessed

           on 7 May 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?

           v=PZe0J1o_A8c>

If we were citing an anonymous video, we might include the username of the account that uploaded it instead.

A sound recording:

Composer or artist. Title. Perf. (if known). Manufacturer, year. Medium.

Barraqué, Jean. Sonate Pour Piano. Perf. Herbert

             Henck. ECM Records, 2005. CD.

An interview:

McPhee, John. "John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction

           No. 3." Interview by Peter Hessler. Paris Review

           192 (2010): n. pag. Web. 13 May 2013.

           <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/

            5997/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-3-john-mcphee>

 (Use this format if you read the interview somewhere.)

Doe, Jane. Personal interview. 13 May 2013. (Use this format if you conducted the interview yourself.)