Let me take a guess, are you a humanities student who needs to cite in MLA style?
Together with your in-text citations, you also need to create a works cited list.
It appears at the end of your paper and gives full details of every source that you cited
in the text.
In this video, I'll walk you through the 9 core elements in an MLA reference entry, and
show you how to format your works cited page in the Google Docs environment!
If you only need help with formatting, jump straight to this time stamp!
Hi, I'm Jessica from Scribbr, here to help you achieve your academic goals.
Begin each source entry with the name of the author or creator.
The name of the first author is always inverted, so last name first, then first name.
However, when a second author is listed, their name is not inverted.
When a source has three or more authors, only the first author is listed, followed by “et
al.”
Always include the full title of the source, including subtitles in title case.
The styling of the title depends on the type of source:
Italics when the source is self-contained (e.g. a whole book, movie or website).
Quotation marks when the source is part of a larger whole (e.g. a chapter of a book,
a page on a website, or an article in a journal).
A container is the larger work that the source you’re citing appears in.
For example, a chapter is part of a book, a page is part of a website, and an article
is part of a journal.
You should italicize the container.
Leave out this element if the source is a self-contained whole, like a book.
If there are other relevant contributors, like translators or directors, add them right
after the container title.
Leave out this element if there are no other contributors.
When there is more than one version of a source, include the version you used.
For example, a second edition book, or a director's cut of a movie.
Sources such as journal articles, magazines, and TV shows are often numbered.
Include this element if your source has numbered parts.
The publisher is the company responsible for producing and distributing the source – it
is usually only included for a book publisher like oxford university press or a movie production
company like warner brothers.
Always include the publication year.
If you also know the month and day of publication, include this if relevant.
Like this
When a source does not state a publication date, add the date on which you accessed the
information at the end of the reference.
For example: Accessed 22 Sep. 2018.
What you include in the location element depends on the type of source you are citing, it could
be:
A page range for a book chapter or journal article
A URL or DOI for an online source The location of a physical object or performance
That's quite a lot of elements to handle huh?
Besides creating your references manually, you can also use scribbr's free citation generator!
Let's say I want to cite an article.
Click on journal, search the article by title, double-check the information, and cite source.
When you’ve finished entering all the references, you can copy the entire list.
All there's left to do is to format the works cited page!
The works cited page page follows the general MLA formatting guidelines.
Check this video out first if you're not sure what they are.
I will quickly set it up now: Select 12 points in Times New Roman font, for the page header,
double click at the top of a page, put in your last name and then insert automatic page
numbering, and choose right aligned.
Then set 1 inch page margins and line spacing to double.
Now, place the section heading "works cited" in plain text, and center it at the top of
the page.
It’s important to sort the references in alphabetical order based on the author’s
last names.
If you copied them from Scribbr's citation generator, the references are automatically
in alphabetical order.
All that's left to do is format the references with hanging indents which basically indents
all the lines except the first.
Select the entire list, set left aligned, then pull the arrow on the ruler to half an
inch, and the rectangle back to 0.
And we're done!
That wasn't too hard right?
Now if you need more help with MLA style, we've got all you need in this playlist!
See you there!