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MLA Style: Basics

This guide is intended to help you cite sources in MLA style, avoid plagiarism, learn what MLA style is and includes, find examples of MLA style, lead you to campus resources that can help you cite sources in MLA, and more.

Using MLA's Template of Core Elements


Starting with MLA's eighth edition, the style guide introduced a new way to build bibliographic citations and this method is still used in the ninth edition. While you can still find an example for your source type and plug in information about your source, the using Core Elements is a more flexible way to build citations. Researchers who cite less commonly used sources like television show episodes, historical advertisements, etc. may find using MLA's Core Elements more flexible.

Using this method, citations are built by arranging core elements in a specific order, with the specified punctuation. For a full explanation of this method, consult the MLA Core Elements Chapter (section 5) in the 9th edition MLA handbook.

Author

When a work has an author or authors, list them first followed by a period. Invert the first author's name so that the citation begins with the author's surname. See Formatting Authors for more information.

Title of Source

Next, list the title of the work followed by a period. If the work doesn't have a title, don't skip this element. See Formatting Titles for more information.

Containers

When it comes to containers, it is helpful to ask "how am I accessing this work?" The information you include about your sources in the container section will help answer this and related questions. The possible core elements with their associated punctuation included in a container are:

  • Title of Container,
  • Contributor,
  • Version,
  • Number,
  • Publisher, (abbreviate University Press to UP)
  • Publication Date, See Formatting Dates
  • Location (DOI, URL or page number).

Include the core elements that are relevant for each container in the order listed here. Skip any core elements that do not apply to your source.

Self-Contained Works

Some works, like novels or scholarly books with a single author, are self-contained. The title of the container is left blank, but the publisher and publication date are provided using the container's core elements. [5.32]

Multiple Containers

You may include more than one container for a single work. For example, journal articles are contained in an issue of a journal, and that issue of a journal is often included in a database. Both containers tell the story of how the work was published and how you found it, so both are helpful to include in your citation. [5.33]

Examples


Barker, Clare, and Stuart Murray. "Disabling Postcolonialism: Global Disability Cultures and Democratic Criticism." The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis, 4th ed., Routledge, 2013, pp. 61-73 . eBook Central, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/snhu-ebooks/reader.action?docID=1125176&ppg=4.

The example above is for the chapter titled "Disabling Postcolonialism: Global Disability Cultures and Democratic Criticism" by Clare Barker and Stuart Murray in the anthology The Disability Studies Reader. Anthologies are a common type of scholarly book where chapters are written by different people and an editor or a team or editors oversees the project. Generally, we're interested in a chapter or two from the work.

We're citing a chapter, so we begin our citation with the names of the chapter authors. We include them in the order they are listed in the source, inverting the first author's name, including a comma and the word and, then the second author's first name, then surname and a period. Next, we include the name of the chapter in title case enclosed in quotation marks. This work is inside two containers.

The first container is the book is was published in, The Disability Studies Reader. We've included the title of the book here, italicized it and followed it with a comma. Next, we include the words edited by and the editor's name. We also include 4th ed., because the edition number is noted on the title page.  Then, we include the name of the publisher, Routledge, italicized and a comma. Finally we include the date of publication, a comma, the abbreviation for page: pp. and the page range in the book where the chapter appears, and a period.

The second container is the database where we found the poem. We've included the name of the database, eBook Central, italicized and followed by a comma. Then, we included the permanent or stable URL for the item in the database. If you were looking at a print version of this book, the information about the database as a container wouldn't apply.

Several possible container core elements weren't relevant to our source, so we omitted them. The complete citation gives readers specific information about which version of the work we're looking at and how we accessed it. Finally, we used a hanging indent and double spaced our citation.

 

Harjo, Joy. "Eagle Poem." Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry, Wesleyan UP, 1994, pp. 237-238. Poetry & Short Story Reference Center, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=prf&AN=82349877&site=prc-live&scope=site.

This is a citation for Joy Harjo's "Eagle Poem". You can open the hyperlinked location to locate the information used to build this citation. This work has a single author and we've inverted her name so that we can alphabetize by surname and followed this with a period. Next up is the title of the work, in this case the specific poem we're interested in. We've included the name of the poem in title case and enclosed it in quotation marks, then followed it with a period. This work is inside two containers.

The first container is the book is was published in, Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry. We've included the title of the book here, italicized it and followed it with a comma. Next, we included the publisher, abbreviating Wesleyan University Press to Wesleyan UP and followed this with a comma, the date of publication, and finally a period.

The second container is the database where we found the poem. We've included the name of the database, Poetry & Short Story Reference Center here, italicized and followed by a comma. Then, we included the permanent or stable URL for the item in the database.

Several possible container core elements weren't relevant to our source, so we omitted them. The complete citation gives readers specific information about which version of the work we're looking at and how we accessed it. Finally, we used a hanging indent and double spaced our citation.

 

Ramsey, Franchesca [@chescalocs]. "Let's Talk Hair with Tracee Ellis Ross!" YouTube, performance by Tracee Ellis Ross, 27 Feb. 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=kZz4GoNB9ks&t=1s.

The beauty of MLA's core elements citation method is that you have some flexibility when it comes to citing sources that don't fit neatly into the categories of sources we tend to cite. Applying this same method, we can cite videos on the internet, tweets, and other digital sources we haven't imagined yet, even if we don't have an example to guide us.

Let's talk through this citation. The account that uploaded the video is chescalocs. The creator isn't listed by name, but they do link to their website so we can discover their full name. I've included both their full name, reversed for alphabetizing, and their handle, as they are different. In some cases, you can't discover a creator's full name and in those cases it's okay to cite by a handle alone, but do take a few minutes to look around for this info. Next up is the title of the video in title case and enclosed in quotation marks.

Now, this source is in a single container, YouTube. The container title, date, and location URL are probably pretty familiar by now. I do want to talk a bit more about the contributor in this citation. From watching the video and exploring the description, it appears to me that Tracee Ellis Ross is a guest on this video, and while both women participated in the filming, the production responsibilities appear to fall to Franchesca Ramsey. For this reason, I've listed Franchesca as the sole author, and included Tracee Ellis Ross as a contributor. This is a situation where different people might interpret the source differently, and there's some wiggle room.