MLA Citation Examples

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Book

Book

Journal

Common Citations in MLA

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This is the author of the work. Their name is formatted as: Last Name, First Name. Note the punctuation: comma between the names and a following period.

This is the title of the book. It is formatted in italics and in title case (i.e. words are capitalized as they would be in a title.) Punctuation: The title is followed with a period.

This is the publication information. The text doesn't have any special formatting, and the information is separated with commas.

This is the publication information. The text doesn't have any special formatting, and the information is separated with commas.

These are the authors of this book. With two authors it is formatted as: Last Name, First Name, and First Name Last Name. If there are more than three authors, it will be formatted as: Last Name, First name, et al.

This is the title of the book. It is formatted in italics in title case and ends with a period.

This is the title of the book. It is formatted in italics in title case and ends with a period.

This is the publisher. There is no special formatting and the information is separated with a comma and ends with a period.

This is the author of the journal article. Since there are three or more authors it is formatted as: Last Name, First Name, et al.

This is the title of the article. Article titles are formatted in italics and in title case, followed by a period.

This is the title of the journal the article was published in, otherwise known as it's "container". It is formatted the same as a book title: in italics and in title case, except it is followed with a comma, not a period.

This is publication information about the journal, including the volume and issue number, as well as the year the article was published. This is not formatted with italics and information is separated with commas with the following abbreviations: vol. #, no. #, YYYY,

These are the page numbers that the article was published on in the journal. They don't have any special formatting, but have special abbreviations: pp. ##-##.

For articles accessed on the internet, you will also include the site or database the information was accessed from, as well as the DOI (Digital Object Identifier is a code assigned to a digital object that serves as a permanent link), or URL is there is no DOI.

City of publication should be included before the Publisher in the following situations: The book was published before 1900, publisher has offices in multiple countries, the publisher is unknown in North America. None of these apply to this example.

City of publication should be included before the Publisher in the following situations: The book was published before 1900, publisher has offices in multiple countries, the publisher is unknown in North America. None of these apply to this example.