MLA format is the referencing style of the Modern Language Association, set out in the MLA Handbook (9th edition, 2021). It pairs an author–page in-text citation with an alphabetical “Works Cited” list, and builds every entry from one flexible template of core elements rather than from a separate rule for each source type. MLA is the standard in literature, languages, cultural studies and much of the humanities.
The defining idea of modern MLA is that you describe a source by walking through the same ordered slots every time. This makes MLA unusually adaptable to new media. To see where MLA sits among the major systems, read it alongside our comparison of APA, MLA, Chicago and Vancouver.
In-text citation: author and page
MLA in-text citations give the author’s surname and a page number, with no comma between them: (Smith 14). If the author is named in the sentence, only the page appears in brackets: Smith argues that the archive is incomplete (14). The absence of a date in the in-text citation is a deliberate humanities convention — a fourteenth-century poem and a modern reading of it are weighed by argument, not recency.
The container model
The heart of MLA 9 is the container. A container is the larger work that holds the source you are citing: a journal that holds an article, a book that holds a chapter, a website that holds a page, a streaming platform that holds a film. You describe the source, then describe its container. A source can sit inside two containers — an article inside a journal, inside a database — and you describe both in turn. This nesting is what lets one template handle a poem in an anthology, an episode on a streaming service, or a tweet, without inventing new rules.
The nine core elements
Every Works Cited entry is assembled from up to nine core elements, in this fixed order, each followed by its own punctuation mark:
| Order | Core element | Ends with |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Author. | full stop |
| 2 | Title of source. | full stop |
| 3 | Title of container, | comma |
| 4 | Contributor, | comma |
| 5 | Version, | comma |
| 6 | Number, | comma |
| 7 | Publisher, | comma |
| 8 | Publication date, | comma |
| 9 | Location. | full stop |
You include only the elements that apply to your source and skip the rest, keeping the order intact. A journal article therefore reads: Smith, Jane. “Reading the Incomplete Archive.” Journal of Literary Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2021, pp. 220–38. The author and source title come first, then the container with its number, date and “location” — here, the page range.
Works Cited anatomy
The Works Cited list is alphabetical by author surname, double-spaced, with a hanging indent — formatting it shares with APA, even though the entry contents differ. “Location” is MLA’s catch-all for where the source sits: page numbers for print, a DOI or URL for online sources, even a physical place for a performance or artwork. MLA 9 recommends including a DOI where one exists, formatted as a full doi.org link, because a stable identifier ties the entry to the durable scholarly record.
How MLA differs from APA
The two styles answer different disciplinary needs. APA’s author–date system foregrounds when a study was published, because empirical evidence ages; MLA’s author–page system foregrounds where in the text a passage sits, because close reading depends on pointing to exact lines. APA title-cases journal names but sentence-cases article titles; MLA uses title case throughout and puts article and chapter titles in quotation marks. The choice between them is set by your discipline and your editor, as our APA essentials guide explains for the social sciences.
Whatever the style, the underlying questions about who is credited and how contributions are recorded are constant — which is why CASRAI’s work on authorship and credit sits beneath every referencing system, not above any one of them.
Frequently asked questions
What if a source has no page numbers?
Omit the page number from the in-text citation and use the author’s name alone: (Smith). If the source has numbered paragraphs or sections, you may cite those with a label, such as (Smith, par. 4). Do not count unnumbered pages yourself.
How do I cite a source inside a database?
Use two containers. Describe the article and its journal (the first container), then add the database as a second container with the DOI or stable URL as the location. This is exactly the nesting the container model was designed for.
Does MLA use “et al.” for multiple authors?
Yes. For three or more authors, name the first author followed by “et al.” in both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry. Two authors are both named, joined by “and”.
Should I include URLs in MLA?
MLA 9 recommends including a DOI where available, and otherwise a stable URL, as the location element. You may drop the “https://” prefix per the handbook’s guidance. Check our author guidance if you are unsure how to describe an unusual online output.