Building Your Works Cited in MLA
Overview
A guide to building your Works Cited page in MLA formatting.
Purpose
This online tutorial is intended to be a step-by-step guide to building your Works Cited in MLA 9th edition. Every Works Cited entry will use some but not all of MLA's Core Elements:
Some sources may not have an author named, in which case, you'll start with the title. Some may not have a "Title of container," if they are considered a long work, like a book or a whole website. Only works with editors or translators will have "Other contributors" listed, only books will multiple editions will have a "Version," and only journals with volume and issue numbers will have a "Number." Books will have a publisher to name, but you need only list a publisher for a website if it is different than the name of the website, which typically is put as the "Title of container" (website publishers are often listed in copyright info at the bottoms of webpages). Every source should have a date and a location, but the location may be a page range in a physical publication or a URL (web address) in an electronic source.
Introductory Formatting
First, your Works Cited must start on a fresh page, but don't just press enter until you get to the next page, as that formatting will not translate when you submit your work to other programs, like Canvas and Turnitin. Instead, insert a page break.
Next, make sure your formatting is the same as the rest of your essay: 12-point Times New Roman font, double spaced, with one inch margins.
Center a heading that reads: Works Cited
After that, back at left aligned, on the left margin, you begin your first citation.
REMEMBER: Do not number or use bullets for your citations. You will alphabetize them by the first word (either an author's last name or the first word of a title for works with no named author). We will format into the proper hanging indentation at the end.
Author
The first author name is reversed:
Smith, Joan.
(notice the comma and the period).
If there are two authors named, the first author's name is reversed, but the second author's name is not:
Smith, Joan, and Tom Jones.
(again, punctuation should appear exactly like this example)
If there are three or more authors named, you only need to list the first author, and then the abbrevations "et al." which is short for et alia, a Latin term meaning "and others":
Smith, Joan, et al.
If no author is named, then you will start the citation with the Title. DO NOT put the name of a publication in as an author. Author names must only be people's names!
Title
If the work is a "short work," like an article in a magazine or journal or on a webpage, then it should only be in quotations marks:
"The Name of the Game: Typical Titles."
(Remember proper title capitalization)
If the work is a "long work," like the name of a whole book, or if you're citing an entire website, for some reason, and not just one webpage on the site, only then do you use italics:
Title Case.
If your work is a short work, it will have a "Title of container."
If your work is a long work, it will NOT have a "Title of container" OR a "Number."
Title of Container
A container is any resource that contains or holds other works. So a book that collects essays or stories can be considered a container for each of those works, and a website that may host many webpages, articles, or documents is the container for anything hosted on it.
Containers are long works and must be in italics:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Atlantic,
After the container title, there should be commas between each element that is describing that container, such as: Other Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Date, and Location.
After Location is a period, after which sometimes a second container may be listed, if, for example, the work was published in a journal, and then that journal is hosted on a database.
Other Contributors
An editor or editors may be listed as Other Contributors with this notation:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." Title Case, edited by Tom Jones
This would be an example of an essay that was collected in an edited book.
A translator may also be listed as an Other Contributor with a similar notation
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Atlantic, translated by Tom Jones
This would be an example of a work that was published in a magazine or website that had also been translated.
Version
A version typically is only indicated on a book that has multiple editions:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." Title Case, edited by Tom Jones, 5th ed.,
It may also be used to indicate if a book is an "Unabridged version" or if a film is the "Director's cut."
Number
The Number is typically only used in citations of academic journals or any publications with specific numbers of volumes and issues. These are indicated with these very specific notations:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Journal of Typography, vol. 12, no. 24
Sometimes a publication may have a volume number but no issue number, and vice versa, a container may give issue numbers but no volume number.
The Number Core Element is also where you would indicate the season number and episode number of a television or streaming series.
Publisher
In a book, the publisher name can be found on the title page and the verso (the page with all the publishing info).
Jones, Tom. Title Case. Picky Publishers,
Above is an example of a simple book citation, up to the publisher.
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." Title Case, edited by Tom Jones, Picky Publishers,
Above is an example of a citation for a short work that is collected in an edited volume, up to the publisher.
Not every source will have a publisher. When citing an article from an academic journal, for example, you never cite a publisher and instead move right on to date. Many websites also do not list publisher. When they do, it is hidden among the copyright info at the bottom of webpages, and if the publisher name is identical or nearly identical to the website name, there is no need to cite it.
However, if you scroll to the bottom of a webpage and a publisher with a name different from the website name is present, include it at this location in the citation, before the date.
Date
In a book, typically only a year is given for publication date:
Jones, Tom. Title Case. Picky Publishers, 2022.
The above is a complete citation for a whole book that has no different editions or editors. If you are citing only one work collected in the book, however, you will need a Location.
A magazine or website may give a month and a year, or even a season and year. Give the date as the source gives it, but you can abbreviate months with longer names to three letters:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Atlantic, Aug. 2022,
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Atlantic, Fall 2022,
If published in a physical magazine, as page range is then needed as Location. If published online, a URL (web address) will serve as the Location.
Some publications give the exact date, and in MLA, it is written with the day first, then the month and year:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Journal of Typography, vol. 12, no. 24, 17 Aug. 2022,
Academic Journals will always have a page range as the Location, and you'll typically then give a second container, with the name of the database where you accessed the journal article (second container title), and a permalink or DOI (digital object identifier) as the second Location.
Location
As previously indicated, a Location can either be a page range or a URL (web address), depending on the type of source.
An essay or story collected in a book, or an article in a journal, will end the container information with a page ranger using the following notation:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." Title Case, edited by Tom Jones, 5th ed., Picky Publishers, 2022, pp. 26-48.
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Journal of Typography, vol. 12, no. 24, 17 Aug. 2022, pp. 26-48.
An article published on a webpage will usually lack page numbers. You will cite the URL (web address) as the Location, simply copying and pasting it from the browser address bar:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Atlantic, Aug. 2022, www.atlantic.com/articles/name-game/1354648.htm.
The "https://" can be removed from web addresses. Make sure there is a period at the end to indicate the end of conatiner info.
An article in a scholarly journal will typically be accessed through an online database, requiring a second container: the database name (in italics because it too is a container title) and a URL or DOI (digital object identifier):
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Journal of Typography, vol. 12, no. 24, 17 Aug. 2022, pp. 26-48. EBSCO, DOI: 65.498/746.
Hanging indentation
After making sure your citations are properly alphabetized, you must now put your citations in hanging indentation. This is easily accomplished in Microsoft Word or Google Docs by selecting all of the citations you've created and changing their indentation on the ruler or in the paragraph formatting settings.
In the settings menus, you'll find menus for indentation, and you will see a "special" indentation option called "hanging." Otherwise, if you use the ruler, it will differ depending on your word processing program.
In Word, you must hover over the middle section of the slider on the ruler. It will say "hanging." Slide that to 0.5 inches.
In Docs, you must click the bottom slider, move it to 0.5 inches, then click the top slider, which moves the first line, and drag it back to 0.0 inches (the left margin).
Essentially, the first line of every citation should be at the left margin while all the rest of the lines in each citation should be at half an inch. You cannot fake this by putting a paragraph break at the end of the first line and manually indenting. If you do that, your formatting will end up looking something like the citation below, with one word not indented in the second line:
Smith, Joan. "The Name of the Game: Typical Titles." The Journal of Typography, vol. 12, no. 24, 17 Aug.
2022, pp. 26-48. EBSCO, DOI: 65.498/746.