MLA Style (9th Edition) Citation Guide

MLA style was created by the Modern Language Association of America. It provides a set of rules for formatting publications, including research papers. MLA style is often used by the humanities disciplines to cite sources. This includes the disciplines of English, international languages, theater, cultural studies, and other humanities. 

In MLA style, you must cite sources you have paraphrased, quoted, or otherwise used to write your research paper. Cite your sources in two places:

1. In the body of your paper with a brief in-text citation.
2. In the Works Cited list at the end of your paper to give more complete information for sources you used.

Note: For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.

A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.

Author

If there is no known author, start the citation with the title instead. For websites, the "author" can be a corporation or group, not only a specific person. Author information can sometimes be found in the "About" section on a website. If there is no known author, start the citation with the title of the website instead.

Titles

Capitalize the first letter of every important word in the title. You do not need to capitalize words such as: in, of, or an.

If there is a colon (:) in the title, include what comes after the colon (also known as the subtitle).

Dates

The format of dates is: Day Month (shortened) Year. Example: 5 Sept. 2012

Whether to give the year alone or include a month and day depends on your source: write the full date given by the source.

If no date is listed, omit it unless you can find that information from another reliable source.

For websites, the best date to use is when the content was last updated. Otherwise, look for a copyright or original publication date. If the website does not include a copyright/last modified date, then omit the date and include an access date in your citation instead.

Access Date

Date of access is optional in MLA 9th edition; it is recommended for pages that may change frequently or those without a copyright/publication date.

DOI

If your source has a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) - DOI numbers should be preceded by https://doi.org/. Although MLA style usually omits https:// from URLs and permalinks, when citing a DOI, https:// should be included.

Legal Citations

From the MLA Style website: "Following one of the fundamental principles of MLA style, writers citing legal works should document the version of the work they consult—not the canonical version of the law, as in legal style. As with any source in MLA style, how you document it will generally depend on the information provided by the version of the source you consulted." See "Documenting Legal Works in MLA Style" on the MLA website.