MLA (Modern Language Association) style, used across English, literature and the humanities, builds every reference from the same core elements in a fixed order. For a book, most of them are empty, which leaves a short reference: author, title, publisher, year.
Format
Surname, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle in Title Case. Edition, Publisher, Year.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
In-text: (Adichie 112)
The parts, one by one
- Author. Surname, comma, first name as it appears on the book, then a full stop: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi.
- Title. In italics and title case, with every main word capitalised, followed by a full stop.
- Edition. Only for later editions, abbreviated: 5th ed.
- Publisher. The publisher’s name, followed by a comma. Leave out business words such as Inc. or Ltd.
- Year. The year of the edition you used, then a full stop.
Two authors and later editions
With two authors, only the first is inverted; the second is written first name first, after “and”:
Creswell, John W., and J. David Creswell. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 5th ed., SAGE Publications, 2018.
In-text: (Creswell and Creswell 41)
With three or more authors, give the first author and “et al.”, both in the Works Cited list and in the text.
A chapter in an edited collection
Cite the chapter you used. Its title goes in quotation marks; the book, as the “container”, is in italics, followed by the editors and the chapter’s page range:
Chapter in an edited book
Surname, First Name. “Title of Chapter.” Title of Book, edited by First Name Surname, Publisher, Year, pp. first–last.
Mbiti, Isaac, and David N. Weil. “Mobile Banking: The Impact of M-Pesa in Kenya.” African Successes, Volume III: Modernization and Development, edited by Sebastian Edwards et al., University of Chicago Press, 2015, pp. 247–93.
In-text: (Mbiti and Weil)
In-text citations
MLA uses the author–page system, with no year and no comma:
- (Adichie 112)
- Adichie describes the outbreak of war through Ugwu’s eyes (112).
- Two authors: (Creswell and Creswell 41). Three or more: (Banerjee et al. 25).
- Two works by the same author: add a short title, (Adichie, Half 112).
The Works Cited page
- Start a new page headed Works Cited, centred, not bold.
- List sources in alphabetical order by the first word of each entry, usually the author’s surname.
- Double-space everything and use a 0.5-inch (1.27 cm) hanging indent.
Common mistakes
- Writing the title in sentence case. MLA capitalises the main words.
- Adding the city of publication.
- Putting a comma between author and page in the text: it’s (Adichie 112), not (Adichie, 112).
- Inverting every author’s name. Only the first is surname-first.