MLA Citation Style: Formatting Rules, In-Text Citations, and Works Cited

What Is MLA Style?

MLA style organizes citations around a template of core elements, author, title, container, publisher, and date, rather than a separate rule for every kind of work. That template is what lets the same system cover a printed novel, a podcast episode, or a social media post. Because it favors close reading and interpretation over data citation, MLA is the standard style in English composition, literature, and most humanities departments, while APA dominates fields like psychology and Chicago is common in history and publishing. The rules below come from the MLA Handbook, the Modern Language Association’s official reference, currently in its ninth edition.

MLA Paper Formatting Rules

Before adding a single citation, the paper itself has to follow the ninth edition’s format rules for margins, spacing, fonts, and the heading that opens page one. Purdue OWL’s MLA formatting guide covers every requirement in full detail, and the table below lists the seven elements graders check most often when a paper lands on their desk.

Element	Rule
Font	12-point, easily readable (Times New Roman is the default choice).
Spacing	Double-spaced throughout, including the Works Cited page.
Margins	1 inch on all four sides.
Heading	Your name, instructor’s name, course, and date, stacked in the upper left corner of page one.
Running header	Your last name and the page number in the upper right corner of every page.
Title	Centered, in title case, with no bold, italics, or underline.
Section headings	Title case, and consistent in size and placement if the paper uses them.

MLA In-Text Citations

MLA in-text citations are short and point the reader to a full entry on the Works Cited page. Add the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses right after the borrowed idea or quotation. ASU’s MLA in-text citation guide covers edge cases like sources with no page numbers or multiple authors.

If you already name the author in your sentence, drop the name from the parenthetical citation and keep only the page number. For example: Chen argues that annotation habits have moved online (52).

MLA Works Cited Page

Every work cited in the body of a paper needs a full, matching entry on a separate Works Cited list at the very end, arranged so a reader can trace any borrowed idea back to where it came from. The MLA Style Center, the association’s own site, organizes every entry around nine core elements: author, title of source, title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, and location.

Not every work has all nine elements, so you list only the ones that apply and skip the rest.

List entries alphabetically by the author’s last name, double-spaced, with a hanging indent. The first line of each entry sits flush left, and every line after it is indented half an inch.

Two elements come up often enough to call out on their own. When a webpage has no clear date of publication, add when you accessed it at the end of the entry, for example: Accessed 14 Feb. 2026. When a piece comes from a library database, include a DOI (digital object identifier) instead of a URL whenever it has one, since that permanent link will not break if the database changes its own address.

MLA Journal Article and Database Citations

A periodical entry follows the same core-elements template as a book or website, but it adds a volume and issue number so a reader can locate exactly where a piece appeared. Give the volume, the year, and the page range, followed by the database name and permalink if you found the piece through a library database rather than in print.

Element	Format
Volume and issue	vol. 43, no. 2
Publication year	Year alone for most journals, or month and year for magazines (abbreviate months except May, June, and July, for example Feb. 2026)
Database and DOI	Database Name, plus a permanent link

A full Works Cited entry that follows this pattern might read: Latartara, John. “The Timbre of Thai Classical Singing.” Asian Music, vol. 43, no. 2, 2012, pp. 88-114. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2012.0013.

Common MLA Source Examples

The core-elements template stays the same across reference kinds, which is why a single set of rules can cover a physical text, a class website, and a scholarly paper without contradicting itself. These common formats, drawn from Purdue OWL’s online-source examples, show how the template plays out for the kinds of works students cite most.

Kind of work	Works Cited format
Book	Author Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Year.
Website	Author Last Name, First Name. “Title of Page.” Title of Website, Publisher, Date, URL.
Periodical article	Author Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Periodical, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #-#.
E-book from a database	Author Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Year. Database Name, URL.

For a full walkthrough of a specific reference, see how to cite a book, how to cite a website, or how to cite a journal article in MLA.

MLA vs. Other Citation Styles

MLA is not the only citation system a student will run into once they leave a literature or composition course. The table below highlights how it differs from the two styles students most often confuse it with, so switching between classes gets easier.

Style	How it differs from MLA
APA	Used mainly in the social sciences. In-text citations lead with the author and publication year instead of a page number, and the reference page is titled “References.”
Chicago	Common in history and publishing. Offers a notes-bibliography option with footnotes instead of parenthetical citations, alongside an author-date option closer to APA.

Common MLA Mistakes to Avoid

Most MLA errors are not about creativity. They come from skipping a small structural detail that a grader checks on every paper, like an indent, a page range, or which element a citation drops for a periodical. The table below covers the slips that show up most often in student Works Cited pages.

Mistake	Fix
Forgetting the hanging indent	Every Works Cited entry after its first line needs a half-inch indent, so a reader can scan author names down the left margin.
Choosing a URL over a permanent link	A database entry’s permanent link stays valid even after the database changes its own address, so prefer it over a URL that can break.
Skipping the double space	The Works Cited list follows the same double-spacing as the rest of the paper. Single-spaced entries are a common structural slip.
Alphabetizing by title instead of author	Works Cited entries are alphabetized by the author’s last name. Only alphabetize by title when a work has no listed author.

Related Citation Guides

MLA style covers more kinds of references than a single guide can walk through in full. The guides below break down the format for a specific kind of reference, so start with whichever one matches what a paper actually needs to cite.

• Cite a newspaper
• Cite a film
• Cite an image
• Cite music
• Cite a poem
• Cite a YouTube video

For the full list of reference kinds and other citation styles, visit the citation hub.

FAQ

A few questions about MLA citation style come up in almost every writing center appointment. The short answers below cover the ones students ask most, from which edition is current to what happens when a work lists no author at all.