Citing Sources in MLA Style: Works Cited

Works Cited follows the last page of your text. It documents sources cited and provides information to access each source.

• Works Cited should begin on a new page.
• Use the heading "Works Cited" centered on the page.
• Arrange items in alphabetical order by first word of the entry.
• Use hanging indent and double space the entire page - no extra spaces between items.
• Italicize titles of books, journals, magazines, websites, database names, etc.
• If a work has three or more authors, list the first author, then "et al."
• Do not include "http://" when citing URLs.

Journal Articles

Cite online databases (e.g. EBSCOhost, ProQuest, JSTOR) and other subscription services as containers. Thus, provide the title of the database italicized before the DOI or URL. If a DOI is not provided, use the URL instead. Provide the date of access if you wish.

Journal article with DOI  [two authors]

Witt, Arnaud, and Annie Vinter. "Artificial Grammar Learning In Children: Abstraction Of Rules Or Sensitivity To Perceptual Features?" Psychological Research, vol. 76, no. 1, 2012, pp. 97-110. Business Source Complete, doi: 10.1007/s00426-011-0328-5. Accessed 17 Aug. 2016.

Journal article with no DOI  [one author]

Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/60/362. Accessed 20 May 2016.

Corporate Author

Modern Language Association of America. "Evaluating Translations as Scholarship: Guidelines for Peer Review." Profession, 2011, pp.264-267. MLA International Bibliography, doi: 10.1632/prof.2011.2011.1.264. Accessed 9 Aug. 2016.

Magazine Article​

Worland, Justin. "Degrees Of Global Warming." Time, 28 Dec. 2015, p. 18.

From the magazine's website

Green, Joshua. "The Rove Presidency." The Atlantic.com, Sep. 2007, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/09/the-rove-presidency/306132/. Accessed 9 Sep. 2015.

Newspaper Article

Richardson, Lynda. "Minority Students Languish in Special Education System." New York Times, 6 Apr. 1994, late ed., p. A1+.

No Author

"It's Subpoena Time." Editorial. New York Times, late ed., 8 June 2007, p. A28.

Access date is used with online works because they can be changed or removed at any time. The date of access is especially crucial if the source provides no date specifying when it was produced or published. 

"'The Rose': Living After Japan Disaster." CNN, 11 Mar. 2012, www.cnn.com/2012/03/10/opinion/yoshimoto-japan-rose/index.html. Accessed 9 Aug. 2017.

Whittier, John. "A Prayer." The Freedmen's Book, edited by L. Maria Child, 1866 p. 178. Google Books, books.google.com/books?id=OopkyEpx1U4C&pg=PR6&dq=The+Freedmen%27s+Book+Whittier,+John+G.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1x4_sk7XOAhXELmMKHc4PCtgQ6AEIHjAA. Accessed 15 Aug. 2017.

Audiovisual

Frost, Brian. "Frog Dissection Structures & Functions." YouTube, 4 Jan. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W46aHMsefc. Accessed 27 Aug. 2017.

United States Department of Energy. "Geothermal Resource Map US." Wikimedia Commons, 4 May 2005, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geothermal_resource_map_US.png. Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.

Book  [three or more authors]

Booth, Wayne, et al. The Craft of Research. 2nd ed., U of Chicago P, 2003. 

Ebook  [one author]

Janik, Erika. A Short History of Wisconsin. Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/edgewood-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3417331. Accessed 9 Aug. 2016. 

No Author

New York Public Library American History Desk Reference. Macmillan, 1997. 

Chapters or Sections of Books

Levine, Linda Gould. "Weaving Life into Fiction." Isabel Allende Today: An Anthology of Essays, edited by Rosemary G. Feal and Yvette E. Miller, Latin American Literary Review, 2002, pp. 1-28.

Encyclopedia

Print  [two authors]

Doyle, Derek, and David Barnard. "Palliative Care and Hospice." Encyclopedia of Bioethics, edited by Stephen G. Post, 3rd ed., vol. 4, Macmillan, 2004, pp. 1969-1975.

Online

Gill, Sam. "Shamanism: North American Shamanism." Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Lindsay Jones, 2nd ed., vol. 12, Macmillan, 2005, pp. 8287-8290. Gale Virtual Reference Library, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3424502821&v=2.1&u=edgewood_oscar&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=91256f4d7be0dbf1b5b0edfbf2f91302. Accessed 9 Aug. 2016.

Commonly used Reference books

"Noon." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. 

Some important notes about in-text citations for Scripture passages:

• Do not italicize general titles for scripture: Bible, Koran, Talmud.
• Do italicize specific editions: The New Oxford Annotated Bible; The Holy Qur'an.
• When citing a specific edition, note it in the first citation and omit in subsequent references.
• Cite abbreviated titles of books and use a period (rather than a colon) between numbers of chapters and verses.

In one of the most vivid prophetic visions in the Bible, Ezekiel saw "what seemed to be four living creatures," each with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle (New Jerusalem Bible, Ezek. 1.5-10). John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Works Cited

The Koran. Translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford UP, 2005.

The New Jerusalem Bible. General editor, Henry Wansbrough, Doubleday, 1985.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New Revised Standard Version, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy, Oxford UP, 1991. 

• Drama and poems - omit page numbers and use act, scene, book, canto, part and line numbers.
• Use abbreviations for Shakespeare's plays (listed in MLA guides) otherwise shorten titles as for other citations.
• Works published before 1900 - Omit publisher and use Place, date.

(Ham. 1.5.17)       (Troilus 1.1-2)       (Dante 14.106-111)

Prose works - cite the page for edition you are using followed by a semicolon and add chapter and section information to help readers locate quotation in any edition.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft recollects... (184; ch. 13, sec. 2).

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed., Houghton, 1957, pp. 385-479.

Dante Alighieri. Dante's Inferno. Edited and translated by Mark Musa, Indiana UP, 1995. 

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, Cambridge, 1866. 

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Edited by Carol H. Poston, Norton, 1975. 

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