How do I cite a website in MLA format?

Cite a website in MLA format with the author, the page title in quotation marks, the website name in italics, the publication date, and the URL without https://. An entry reads: Okafor, Samuel. “Caring for Old Photographs.” Riverside Historical Society, 3 Oct. 2024, history.example.org/photo-care. The in-text citation is (Okafor).

How do I cite a book in MLA?

Cite a book in MLA with the author's name in last-name-first order, the title in italics, the edition if it is not the first, the publisher, and the year. The Works Cited entry reads: Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed., Pearson, 2004. A citation of page 8 reads (Crowley and Hawhee 8).

Does MLA use page numbers in in-text citations?

Yes, MLA in-text citations put the page number straight after the author's last name, as in (Haddad 142). A web page or video without page numbers gets the name alone.

What is the difference between Works Cited and a bibliography?

A Works Cited list holds only the sources you cite in the paper, and a bibliography can hold every source you read. MLA prefers the title Works Cited and calls a list of extra reading Works Consulted.

What is the latest edition of MLA?

The latest edition of MLA style is the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook, released by the Modern Language Association in April 2021. It replaced the 8th edition from 2016.

Free MLA Citation Generator – MLA 9 & Works Cited

What Is an MLA Citation Generator?

An in-text citation in the paper points to its full entry in the Works Cited list.

An MLA citation generator is a free online tool that turns the details of a source into a Works Cited entry and a matching in-text citation in MLA style. The tool puts each detail in MLA order, adds the commas and periods between them, sets the right titles in italics, and shortens months and publisher names the way the MLA Handbook asks. The same tool works as an MLA citation maker for a single source and as a Works Cited generator for a whole paper.

High school students, college students, and university students use it for an essay or a research paper in English, literature, foreign languages, cultural studies, and other humanities courses. Teachers, librarians, and writers use one to check a finished Works Cited list. The generator on this page has 4 parts: a source search, an input form, the citation output, and a Works Cited list builder.

What Is MLA Style?

MLA style is the citation and paper format of the Modern Language Association (MLA), set out in the MLA Handbook. The MLA has published the handbook since 1977, and its MLA Style Center answers style questions between editions. MLA style uses an author-page system, so the reader moves from a name and a page in the text to the full source at the end of the paper.

Every MLA citation has 2 halves:

In-Text Citation

A short pointer inside the sentence that uses the source. It names the author, or a short title when there is no author, and the page.

Works Cited Entry

The full record of the source: who made it, what it is called, where it appeared, and when. It sits with the other entries on the last page of the paper.

Parts of an MLA Citation

An MLA Works Cited entry for a journal article has 5 visible parts: the author, the article title, the journal with its volume and issue, the date, and the location, which is the page range and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The in-text citation repeats only the author’s last name and adds the page cited.

Works Cited entry

Berman, Russell. “The Necessity of Language Learning.” ADFL Bulletin, vol. 43, no. 2, 2015, pp. 11-14, https://doi.org/10.1632/adfl.43.2.11.

In-text citation

(Berman 12)

AuthorTitlePublisher or sourceDatePage or locator

MLA Style vs. APA and Chicago

MLA style differs from APA, Chicago, and Harvard in 3 ways: it leaves the year out of the in-text citation, it calls its list Works Cited, and it places the date near the end of the entry. The table compares how each style cites page 33 of a 2019 article by Daniel Reyes.

Style	In-text citation	List at the end of the paper	Position of the year in the entry
MLA 9	(Reyes 33)	Works Cited	After the volume and issue
APA 7	(Reyes, 2019, p. 33)	References	After the author
Chicago author-date	(Reyes 2019, 33)	References	After the author
Chicago notes-bibliography	Superscript note number¹	Bibliography	In parentheses after the issue
Harvard	(Reyes, 2019, p. 33)	Reference list	After the author

How to Use Our MLA Citation Generator

To use the MLA citation generator, follow these 6 steps at the top of the page:

Choose MLA 9 or MLA 8
Keep MLA 9 (2021) in the Edition menu, or pick MLA 8 (2016) when a course still asks for the older handbook.
Pick the source type
Website, Book, Journal, and Video have their own tabs. The More menu holds the other 40 source types, with a search box to find one by name.
Find the source
Search for a book by title, author, or International Standard Book Number (ISBN), or for an article by title or DOI. Paste an arXiv ID, a PubMed ID (PMID), or a YouTube or Vimeo link and press Cite. The form fills itself from Crossref, DataCite, PubMed, Open Library, or the video page. Paste any other web address and the tool reads the title, author, site name, and date that the page states. A few sites block this, and then only the link is added.
Check the details
Type the page you quoted in Page cited, so the in-text citation shows it. Put an organization author under Last name. Turn off Capitalize titles in MLA title case for a title in a language other than English, which keeps its own capitalization.
Copy the citation
Press Copy next to the Works Cited entry or the in-text citation. The italics stay in place when you paste into Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Build the Works Cited list
Press Add to works cited after each source. The list sorts itself in alphabetical order, and Copy all copies every entry at once.

Source Types the Generator Covers

The generator covers 44 source types, including books, e-books, edited and translated books, book chapters, journal, database, newspaper, and magazine articles, websites, blog posts, YouTube videos, films, TV episodes, podcasts, songs, artworks, maps, datasets, theses, reports, government reports, conference papers, interviews, emails, social media posts, AI-generated content, legal cases, statutes, patents, archival letters, and the Bible.

The tool builds the citations for one paper at a time and does not export BibTeX or RIS files. Reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote keep sources across projects and export those formats.

How to Cite Sources in MLA Format

To cite a source in MLA format, put a short in-text citation in the sentence that uses the source, then give the source’s full details in an entry on the Works Cited page. The in-text citation starts with the same word as the entry, usually the author’s last name, so the reader finds the entry at a glance. Each entry follows one template, which works for any kind of source you cite in MLA.

MLA In-Text Citations

An MLA in-text citation gives the author’s last name and the page number, with no comma and no “p.” between them. Place it before the period that ends the sentence and after any closing quotation mark. MLA uses 2 forms. A parenthetical citation puts the name and the page inside the parentheses. A citation in prose names the author in your sentence, and the parentheses hold the page alone: Burke makes the same point (3). Other styles call the second form a narrative citation.

The citation changes with the number of authors:

Source	In-text citation
One author	(Burke 3)
Two authors	(Best and Marcus 9)
Three or more authors	(Franck et al. 327)
No author (short title)	(“Climate Records”)

MLA Citation Templates by Source Type

MLA citation templates show the MLA citation format for 8 common source types. The templates follow MLA 9.

Source	Works Cited template
Book	Last, First. Title of Book. Publisher, Year.
Chapter in an edited book	Last, First. “Title of Chapter.” Title of Book, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. First-Last.
Journal article	Last, First. “Title of Article.” Journal, vol. Volume, no. Issue, Year, pp. First-Last, https://doi.org/DOI.
Web page	Last, First. “Title of Page.” Name of Website, Day Mon. Year, URL.
Newspaper article	Last, First. “Headline.” Newspaper, Day Mon. Year, URL.
YouTube video	Creator. “Title of Video.” YouTube, Day Mon. Year, URL.
Podcast episode	Last, First, host. “Title of Episode.” Podcast, Publisher, Day Mon. Year, URL.
Film	Title of Film. Directed by First Last, Distributor, Year.

Citing Sources With No Author, No Date, or No Page Number

MLA handles 3 kinds of missing information by leaving the detail out, not by writing a placeholder such as “n.d.” or “n.p.”:

No author: Start the entry with the title: “Climate Records and Coastal Towns.” Coastal History Project, 4 May 2023, coastal.example.org/records. An organization that is both author and publisher appears once, as the publisher, so its entry starts with the title too: Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts, June 2004.
No date: Leave the date out, and end the entry with an access date, the day you viewed the source: Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html. Accessed 6 July 2025. The generator prints the Date accessed field only when the source has no date.
No page number: Leave the page out of the in-text citation, or give the part number the source prints, such as a paragraph (par. 4), a chapter (ch. 2), or a time stamp.

In-text citation

(“Describe the theme”)

MLA does not treat an AI tool as an author. Describe what you asked for in the title slot (your prompt), give the model in the Version element (e.g., model GPT-4o), and use the chat's shareable link if the tool offers one.

Dissertation Citation Example

Works Cited entry

Njus, Jesse. Performing the Passion: A Study on the Nature of Medieval Acting. 2010. Northwestern U, PhD dissertation.

In-text citation

(Njus 45)

Film Citation Example

Works Cited entry

Opening Night. Directed by John Cassavetes, Faces Distribution, 1977.

In-text citation

(Opening Night)

Court Case Citation Example

Works Cited entry

Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S. 483. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483.

In-text citation

(Brown)

MLA has no legal citation format of its own. This entry uses MLA's hybrid method: the case or law name, then its standard legal citation, then where you read it. For readers who do not know legal citation, MLA also allows a full MLA-template entry (for example, United States, Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education. 17 May 1954. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, URL.). In your prose, italicize case names but not the names of laws.

MLA Core Elements and Containers Explained

MLA core elements are the 9 pieces of information that make up a Works Cited entry, and a container is the larger work that holds the source. The MLA Handbook calls this list the MLA template of core elements. Skip any element the source does not have.

The 9 MLA Core Elements

The 9 core elements keep the same order in every entry, each followed by the punctuation shown. The examples come from Anne Goldman’s article in The Georgia Review, read through JSTOR.

#	Core element	Punctuation after it	Example
1	Author	Period	Goldman, Anne.
2	Title of source	Period	“Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante.”
3	Title of container	Comma	The Georgia Review,
4	Contributor	Comma	None here; a chapter in an edited book adds edited by Ben Rafoth,
5	Version	Comma	None here; a later edition of a book adds 3rd ed.,
6	Number	Comma	vol. 64, no. 1,
7	Publisher	Comma	Left out for journals, magazines, and newspapers
8	Publication date	Comma	spring 2010,
9	Location	Period	pp. 69-88.

Elements 1 and 2 each close with a period. Elements 3 to 9 form one unit about the container: commas separate them, and a period closes the unit.

How Containers Work in MLA

A source can sit in 2 containers: the first is the work that holds the source, and the second is the database, website, or streaming service that holds the first container. Repeat elements 3 to 9 for the second container. Goldman’s article sits in the journal, and the journal issue sits in JSTOR:

Goldman, Anne. “Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante.” The Georgia Review, vol. 64, no. 1, spring 2010, pp. 69-88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41403188.

Type the database name, a comma, and the link into the DOI, URL, or database field, as in JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41403188. The generator sets the database name in italics as the second container.

Optional Elements in an MLA Entry

MLA adds optional elements at the end of an entry when they help a reader find or judge a source. The generator adds 2 of them:

A description of the format, such as a vinyl record: Snail Mail. “Thinning.” Habit, Sister Polygon Records, 2016. Vinyl EP.
A label for an unpublished version, such as a preprint: Park, Lena. “Mapping Rural Libraries.” SocArXiv, 12 June 2023, preprints.example.org/rural-libraries. Preprint.

MLA gives the city of publication only for a book published before 1900, where the city takes the place of the publisher.

How to Format an MLA Works Cited Page

An MLA Works Cited page is the alphabetical list of every source the paper cites, placed on a new page after the text and any endnotes. Each source gets one entry, even when the paper cites it on 10 different pages.

Works Cited Page Rules

Format the Works Cited page with these 4 rules:

Center the title Works Cited at the top of the page, in plain type with no bold, italics, or quotation marks. Use Work Cited for a list of one source.
Double-space the whole list, with no extra blank line between entries. An MLA paper is double-spaced from the first page on, and the list keeps that double spacing.
Start each entry at the left margin and indent every later line of that entry by 0.5 inch (1.27 cm), which is called a hanging indent.
Keep the page setup of the paper: 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins and the running head with your last name and the page number.

How to Alphabetize Works Cited Entries

Alphabetize Works Cited entries letter by letter by the first word of each entry, which is usually the author’s last name. 2 cases need care:

An entry that starts with a title files under the first word after A, An, or The, so The Hunger Games goes under H. The generator sorts by the first word as printed, so move these entries by hand after you paste the list.
Several works by one author go in alphabetical order by title. After the first entry, replace the name with three hyphens and a period (---.), or repeat the name in full. The MLA Style Center accepts both.

How to Make a Hanging Indent in Word and Google Docs

To make a hanging indent, select the entries and set a special indent of 0.5 inch:

Microsoft Word: Home > Paragraph dialog box > Indentation > Special: Hanging, By: 0.5”.
Google Docs: Format > Align & indent > Indentation options > Special indent: Hanging, 0.5.

MLA Edition Guidelines: MLA 9 vs. MLA 8

The MLA Handbook 9th edition (April 2021) and the MLA Handbook 8th edition (April 2016) share one citation template and differ in 2 rules that change how an entry looks: the DOI prefix and the capitalization of seasons. MLA 9 keeps the 9 core elements, their order, containers, and the author-page citation from MLA 8, and the generator offers both editions.

What Changed in MLA 9

The table lists the differences the MLA Style Center reports between the two handbooks:

Rule or feature	MLA 8 (2016)	MLA 9 (2021)
DOI	doi:10.5555/jh.2018.12.2	https://doi.org/10.5555/jh.2018.12.2
Seasons in dates	Spring 2018	spring 2018
Handbook length	160 pages, 164 sample citations	400 pages, 333 sample citations, and an appendix of over 200 more
New chapters and sections	None	Paper formatting, notes, annotated bibliographies, and inclusive language

The same article in both editions:

MLA 8: Lopez, Maria. “Archival Methods in Practice.” Journal of History, vol. 12, no. 2, Spring 2018, pp. 45-67, doi:10.5555/jh.2018.12.2.
MLA 9: Lopez, Maria. “Archival Methods in Practice.” Journal of History, vol. 12, no. 2, spring 2018, pp. 45-67, https://doi.org/10.5555/jh.2018.12.2.

Which MLA Edition Should You Use?

Use MLA 9, unless your instructor or journal names MLA 8. The MLA 9th edition is the current edition of the MLA Handbook. Between editions, the MLA Style Center posts rulings that apply to MLA 9, such as how to cite generative AI and which name to give X (formerly Twitter).

MLA 7 (2009) and older editions add the medium (Print, Web) and the city of publication to each entry. Rebuild citations made from those templates before you submit a paper.

Common MLA Citation Mistakes to Avoid

There are 6 common MLA citation mistakes, from adding “p.” to an in-text citation to writing University Press in full. Each mistake shows a wrong version and the corrected version.

1Adding a comma or “p.” to the in-text citation

Wrong(Okoye, p. 88)

Right(Okoye 88)
2Keeping https:// in a web address

WrongEnright, Anne. “The Hotel.” The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/the-hotel.

RightEnright, Anne. “The Hotel.” The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/the-hotel.
3Writing the date month first

WrongSilva, Ana. “Library Hours Grow Longer.” Valley Courier, March 8, 2024, news.example.com/library-hours.

RightSilva, Ana. “Library Hours Grow Longer.” Valley Courier, 8 Mar. 2024, news.example.com/library-hours.
4Adding the city of publication for a modern book

WrongGillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

RightGillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
5Listing all names of a work with 3 or more authors

WrongWysocki, Anne Frances, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, and Cynthia L. Selfe. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.

RightWysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.
6Writing University Press in full

WrongLee, Rachel C. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton University Press, 1999.

RightLee, Rachel C. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton UP, 1999.

Why Use Our MLA Citation Generator?

Our MLA citation generator is a free citation generator with 3 benefits for academic writing: output matched to official MLA examples, no made-up details, and no account.

Matched to Official MLA Examples

The output was compared with more than 100 Works Cited entries and in-text citations published by the MLA Style Center and Purdue OWL, from books and journal articles to text messages and posts on X.

Nothing Made Up

An element the source does not show stays out of the entry. The generator never guesses an author, a date, or a page number.

Free, With No Account

There is no sign-up and no cap on citations. The details you type stay in your browser, and only a search or a pasted identifier is sent to a lookup service.

An MLA citation generator turns the details of each source into an in-text citation and a Works Cited entry that follow the MLA Handbook, in MLA 9 or MLA 8. Compare each entry with the source before you hand in the paper, since a database record can carry a misspelled name or a wrong date.