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Using MLA Style

MLA style is a format created by the Modern Language Association, and widely used for papers in English composition, literature, and foreign languages. Your instructor should tell you which format to use for your paper; see the other choices at this site for APA (American Psychological Association) style for psychology and the social sciences, CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) style for the humanities, and CBE (Council of Biology Editors, now the Council of Science Editors) style for the sciences (including the health sciences).

Books
Author's Name
Two or More Authors
Author Is a Corporation, Association, or Committee
Author with Two or More Works
Chapter or Part of Book
Title of Book
Editor, Translator, or Compiler
Edition
Multi-Volume Works
Series
Place, Publisher, and Date
Page Numbers
Periodicals
Author's Name
Title of the Article
Name of the Periodical
Volume, Issue, and Page Numbers for Journals
Newspapers
Government Documents
Congressional Papers
Executive Branch Documents
Electronic Sources
Abstract
Article from a Scholarly Journal
Book
Discussion List
E-mail
Home Page for a Web Site
Magazine Article Online
MOO, MUD, and Other Chat Rooms
Newspaper Article
Online Posting
Scholarly Project or Archive
CD-ROMs
Full-Text Articles
Complete Books
Other Sources
Art Work
Dissertation
Film, Videocassette, or DVD
Interview
Letter
Map
Musical Work
Pamphlet
Performance
Lecture or Public Address
Recording
Television or Radio Program

Using MLA Style

Books
Enter information for books in the following order. Items 1, 3, and 8 are required; add other items according to the requirements of your text.

  1. Author
  2. Chapter or part of book
  3. Title of the book
  4. Editor, translator, or compiler
  5. Edition
  6. Volume number of book
  7. Name of the series
  8. Place, publisher, and date
  9. Page numbers
  10. Number of volumes

Author's name
List the author's name, surname first, followed by given name or initials, and then a period:

Reamer, Frederic G. Social Work Values and Ethics. New York: Columbia UP, 1999.
Omit a title, affiliation, or degree that appears with the author's name on the title page. If the author of a work is anonymous, begin with the title, as follows:

The Song of Roland. Trans. Glyn Burgess. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Two or More Authors.
If there are two or three authors, list them in the order in which they appear on the title page. Invert only the first name:

Sulpy, Doug, and Ray Schweighardt. Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles "Let It Be" Disaster. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.
If there are more than three authors, you may list all the authors or use the name of the first author and "et al.," which means "and others."

Lewis, Laurel J., et al. Linear Systems Analysis. New York: McGraw, 2000.

Author Is a Corporation, Association, or Committee
An author can be a corporation, an association, a committee, or any group or institution, and can be indicated as follows:

Committee on Telecommunications. Reports on Elected Topics in Telecommunications. New York: Nat. Acad. of Sciences, 2001.

Author with Two or More Works
When you cite two or more works by the same author, do not repeat his or her name after the first entry; instead, replace the name with three hyphens flush with the left margin, followed by a period. List the works alphabetically by title (ignoring a, an, and the).

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic, 1999.

- - -. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2000.

- - -. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. New York: Scholastic, 1998.

Chapter or Part of Book. If you are using a self-contained portion of a book—usually separately titled or written by a different person—cite that portion rather than the whole book.

Kenan, Randall, "Run, Mourner, Run." Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. San Diego: Harcourt, 1992. 163-91.
If you are citing several selections from one anthology or collection of chapters written by different people, provide a full reference to the anthology and then provide references to the individual selections by providing the author and title of the work, the last name of the editor of the collection, and the inclusive page numbers used from the anthology:

Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen, eds. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.

Bettelheim, Bruno. "'Cinderella': A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts." Behrens and Rosen 638-45.

Title of Book. Provide the full title of the work, underscored or italicized, followed by a period. Separate any subtitle from the primary title by a colon and one space even though the title page has no mark of punctuation or the card catalog entry has a semicolon. For example:

Hendrix, Harville, and Helen Hunt. Giving the Love That Heals: A Guide for Parents. New York: Pocket, 1997.

Editor, Translator, or Compiler. If the name of the editor or compiler appears on the title page of an anthology or compilation, place it first:

Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen, eds. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.
If you are citing the work of a single author or work edited by someone else, the name of the editor, translator, or compiler comes after the title with the abbreviations Ed., Trans., or Comp., as shown:

Yeats, W.B. The Poems of W.B. Yeats. Ed. Richard J. Finneran. New ed. New York: Macmillan, 1983.

Edition
Indicate the edition used, whenever it is not the first, in Arabic numerals ("3rd ed."), by name ("Rev. ed.," "Abr. ed."), or by year ("1999 ed.").

Schulman, Michael, and Eva Meckler. Bringing Up a Moral Child. Rev. ed. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Indicate that a work has been prepared by an editor, not the original author.

Melville, Herman, Moby Dick. Ed. by Alfred Kazin. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1956.

Multi-Volume Works
If you are citing only one volume of a multivolume work, provide the number of that volume with information for that volume only. In your text, you will need to specify only page numbers, as in "(Seale 45-46)."

Seale, William. The President's House: A History. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: White House Historical Assn., 1986
If you are citing two or more volumes of a multivolume work, your in-text citation will need to specify volume and page (Seale 2: 320-21); the Works Cited entry will need to show the total number of volumes, as shown:

Seale, William. The President's House: A History. 2 vols. Washington, DC: White House Historical Assn., 1986.

Series
If the work is one in a published series, show the name of the series, abbreviated, without quotation marks or underscoring, the number of this work in Arabic numerals (for example, "no. 3," or simply "3"), and a period.

Wallerstein, Ruth C. Richard Crashaw: A Study in Style and Poetic Development. U of Wisconsin Studies in Lang. and Lit. 37. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1935.

Place, Publisher, and Date.
Indicate the place of publication, the publisher, and the year of publication; for example:

Schmidgall, Gary. Walt Whitman: A Gay Life. New York: Dutton, 1997.
If more than one place of publication appears on the title page, the first city mentioned is sufficient. If successive copyright dates are given, use the most recent (unless your study is specifically concerned with an earlier, perhaps definitive, edition). Provide the publisher's name in a shortened form, such as "Bobbs" rather than "Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc."

Page Numbers. Cite inclusive page numbers for a self-contained section of a book:

Knoepfmacher, U.D. "Fusing Fact and Myth: The New Reality of Middlemarch." This Particular Web: Essays on Middlemarch. Ed. Ian Adam. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1975. 55-65.

Periodicals
For journal or magazine articles, use the following order:

  1. Author
  2. Title of the article
  3. Name of the periodical
  4. Series number (if relevant)
  5. Volume number (for journals)
  6. Issue number (if needed)
  7. Date of publication
  8. Page numbers

Author's Name
Place the author's name flush with the left margin, with succeeding lines indented one-half inch or five spaces. Enter the surname first, followed by a comma, followed by a given name or initials, followed by a period, as shown:

Smith, Bruce R. "Premodern Sexualities." PMLA 115 (2000): 318-29.

Title of the Article
Show the title within quotation marks, ending with a period inside the closing quotation marks:

Baum, Rosalie Murphy. "Early-American Literature: Reassessing the Black Contribution." Eighteenth Century Studies 27 (1994): 533-49.

Name of the Periodical
Give the name of the journal or magazine in full, underscored or italicized, and with no following punctuation. Omit any introductory articles, such as The.

Dooley, Susan. "Music to Your Eyes." Garden Designs Aug/Sept. 2000: 20-22.

Volume, Issue, and Page Numbers for Journals
Most journals are paged continuously through all issues of an entire year, so listing the month of publication is unnecessary. Page numbers and a volume number are sufficient for you to find an article in Eighteenth Century Studies, for example. However, some journals paginate each issue separately. If that is the case, you will need to add an issue number following the volume number, separated by a period.

Cann, Johnson, and Deborah Smith. "Volcanoes of the Mid-Ocean Ridges and the Building of New Oceanic Crust." Endeavor 18.2 (1994): 61-66.

Newspapers
Provide the name of the author; the title of the article; the name of the newspaper as it appears on the masthead, omitting any introductory article (e.g. Wall Street Journal, not The Wall Street Journal), and the complete date—day, month (abbreviated), and year. Omit any volume number. Provide a page number as listed (e.g., 21, B-6, 14C, D3). If the article is not printed on consecutive pages, write the first page number and a plus (+) sign. Examples include:

Jonsson, Patrik. "New Racial Climate in Suburban South." Christian Science Monitor 28 July 2000: 1+

Morrison, Blake. "Sierra Fire Continues Rampage." USA Today 31 July 2000: 10A.

Government Documents
Since the nature of public documents is so varied, it is impossible to cover all the possible variations here. In general, though, you can arrange information in this order:

  • Government
  • Body or agency
  • Subsidiary body
  • Title of document
  • Identifying numbers
  • Publication facts

Congressional Papers
Senate and House sections are identified by an S or an H with document numbers (e.g., S. Res. 16) and page numbers (e.g., H2345-47).

United States. Cong. Senate. Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary. Juvenile Justice: A New Focus on Prevention. 102nd Cong., 2nd sess. S. Hearing 102. Washington, DC: GPO, 1992.
If you provide a citation to the Congressional Record, you should abbreviate that title to Cong. Rec. and provide only the date and page numbers, as shown:

Cong. Rec. 25 Aug. 1994: S12566-75.

Executive Branch Documents

United States. President. Health Security: The President's Report to the American People. Pr Ex 1.2:H34/4. Washington, DC: GPO, 1993.

Electronic Sources
Include the following items in a citation to an Internet source:

  1. Author/editor name
  2. Title of the article within quotation marks, or the title of a posting to a discussion list or forum followed by the words online posting, followed by a period
  3. Name of the book, journal, or complete work, italicized
  4. Publication information:
    1. Place, publisher, and date for books
    2. Volume and year of a journal
    3. Exact date of a magazine
    4. Date and description for government documents
  5. Name of the sponsoring institution or organization, if available
  6. Date of your access, not followed by a comma or period
  7. URL (Uniform Resource Locator), within angle brackets, followed by a period. If you must divide the URL at the end of a line, break it only after a slash.

Abstract

Ladouceur, Robert, et al., "Strategies Used with Intrusive Thoughts: A Comparison of OCD Patients with Anxious and Community Controls." Journal of Abnormal Psychology 109 (2000). Abstract. 10 May 2000 <http://www.apa.org/journals/abn/500ab.html>.

Article from a Scholarly Journal

Miller, B.A., N.J. Smyth, and P.J. Mudar. "Mothers' Alcohol and Other Drug Problems and Their Punitiveness toward Their Children." Journal of Studies on Alcohol 60 (1999): 632-42. 28 Sept. 2000 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.hih.gov.htbin>.

Book

Lawrence, D.H. Lady Chatterly's Lover. 1928. 26 Sept. 2001 <http://bibliomania.com/fiction/dhl/chat/chat1.html>.

Discussion List

Chapman, David. "Reforming the Tax and Benefit System to Reduce Unemployment." Online Posting. 25 Feb. 1998. Democracy Design Forum. 27 May 2000 <http://www.democdesignforum.demon.co.uk/unemp.nexus.html>.

E-mail

Clemmer, Jim. "Writing Lab." E-mail to the author. 24 Aug. 2001.

Home Page for a Web Site

Dawe, James. Jane Austen Page. 1996-2000. 15 May 2000 <http://www.jamesdawe.com>.

Magazine Article Online

Carney, Dan, Mike France, and Spencer E. Ante. "Web Access Is Becoming a Dicey Issue for Industry and Regulators." Business Week Online 31 July 2000. 2 Aug. 2000 <http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_31>.

MOO, MUD, and Other Chat Rooms

"Virtual Conference on Mary Shelley's The Last Man." Villa Diodati at EmoryMOO. 13 Sept. 1997. 24 Aug. 2000 <http://www.rc.umd.edu/villa/vc97/Shelley_9_13_97.html>.

"Australia: The Olympics 2000." 30 May 2000 Yahoo! Chat. 30 May 2000 <http://chat.yahoo.com/?room=Australia::160032654&identitychat>.

Newspaper Article

Firestone, David. "Anonymous Louisiana Slaves Regain Identity." New York Times on the Web 30 July 2000. 30 July 2000 <http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/0730001a-slaves.html>.

Online Posting

Chapman, David. "Reforming the Tax and Benefit System to Reduce Unemployment." Online Posting. 25 Feb. 1998. Democracy Design Forum. 27 May 2000 <http://www.democdesignforum.demon.co.uk/unemp.nexus.html>.

Scholarly Project or Archive

British Poetry Archive. Ed. Jerome McGann and David Seaman. 1999. U of Virginia Lib. 19 Aug. 2000 <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/britpo.html>.

CD-ROMs
CD-ROM technology provides information in several different ways, and each method of transmission requires an adjustment in the form of the entry in your Works Cited or Bibliography pages.

Full-Text Articles
Full-text articles are available from national distributors such as Information Access Company (InfoTrac), UMI-Proquest (Proquest), Silverplatter, or SIRS CD-ROM Information Systems. Use the following examples:

DePalma, Antony. "Mexicans Renew Their Pact on the Economy, Retaining the Emphasis on Stability." New York Times 25 Sept. 1994: 4. New York Times Ondisc. CD-ROM. UMI-Proquest. Jan. 1995.

Mann, Thomas E., and Norman J. Ornstein. "Shipshape? A Progress Report on Congressional Reform." Brookings Review Spring 1994: 40-45. SIRS Researcher. CD-ROM. Boca Raton: SIRS, 1994. Art. 57.
If there is no information on the printed source for the article, provide as much data as possible:

"Faulkner Biography." Discovering Authors. CD-ROM. Detroit: Gale, 1999.

Complete Books
Cite this type of source as you would a book, and then provide information to the electronic source that you have accessed.

The Bible. The Old Testament. CD-ROM. Parsippany, NJ: Bureau Development, 1999.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "Fall of the House of Usher." Electronic Classical Library. CD-ROM. Garden Grove, CA: World Library, 1999.

Other Sources
There are many other sources of data, whether in print or online, as advertisements, television programs, conference proceedings, unpublished papers, and more. For a wide selection of citation formats, see James D. Lester and James Lester, Jr., Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, 10th Edition (Longman, 2002).

Art Work
Art work that you have viewed yourself should be cited:

Remington, Frederic. Mountain Man. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Art work viewed as a reproduction in a book or journal should be cited:

Raphael. School of Athens. The Vatican, Rome. The World Book Encyclopedia. 1976 ed.

Dissertation
An unpublished dissertation should be cited:

Shore, Zandra Lesley. "Girls Reading Culture: Autobiography as Inquiry into Teaching the Body, the Romance, and the Economy of Love." Diss. U of Toronto, 1999.
A published dissertation should be cited:

Nykrog, Per. Les Fabliaux: Etude d'histoire litteraire et de stylistique medievale. Diss. Aarhus U, 1957. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1957.

Film, Videocassette, or DVD

Shakespeare in Love. Dir. John Madden. Universal Pictures, 1998.

The Piano. Dir. Jane Campion. Miramax, 1992. Videocassette. Live Home Video, 1995.

There's Something about Mary. Dir. Bobby Farraley and Peter Farraley. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 1999.

Interview

Safire, William. Telephone Interview. 5 Mar. 2000.

Letter

Weathers, Walter. Letter to the author. 5 Mar. 2000.

Map

County Boundaries and Names. United States Base Map GE-50, No. 86. Washington, DC: GPO, 1987.

Musical Work

Mozart, Wolfgang A. Jupiter. Symphony No. 41.

Pamphlet

Federal Reserve Board. Consumer Handbook to Credit Protection Laws. Washington, DC: GPO, 1993.

Performance

Oedipus at Colonus. By Sophocles. Trans. Theodore H. Banks. Pearl Theatre, New York. New York. 8 Feb. 1995.

Lecture or Public Address

Evans, Nekhena. Lecture. Brooklyn Historical Soc., New York. 26 Feb. 1995.

Freedman, Diane P. "Personal Experience: Autobiographical Literary Criticism." Address. MLA Convention. Marriott Hotel, San Diego. 28 Dec. 1994.

Recording
The following format applies to recordings on long-playing records (abbreviated LP), audiocassettes, audiotapes, or compact disc; indicate the medium after the information about the specific performance.

"Chaucer: The Nun's Priest's Tale." Canterbury Tales. Narr. In Middle English by Robert Ross. Audiocassette. Caedmon, 1971.

Sanborn, David. "Soul Serenade." Upfront. CD. Elecktra, 1992.

John, Elton. "This Song Has No Title." Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. LP. MCA, 1974.

Television or Radio Program

"Frankenstein: The Making of the Monster." Great Books. Narr. Donald Sutherland. Writ. Eugenie Vink. Dir. Jonathan Ward. Learning Channel. 8 Sept. 1993.

Prairie Home Companion. NPR. WPHN, Nashville. 18 Feb. 1995.

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