Bibliography

MLA citation generator (9th edition)

Works Cited entries and in-text citations in MLA 9 style. Autofill from a link, DOI or ISBN, check the details, then add each source to a sorted Works Cited page.

Create an MLA citation

Smart detection works out the source type from what you paste.

Source details
Source type
Authors (or an organisation)
Publication date (leave blank if none)

Works Cited entry · MLA 9th edition

Your citation appears here as you type, set exactly as it will look in your paper.

In-text citation

Fill in the author and date to see the in-text version.

How MLA citations are built

MLA doesn’t give you a separate formula for every source type. It gives you one list of core elements, in a fixed order, and you use the ones your source has:

  1. Author. Surname, first name.
  2. Title of source. In quotation marks if it’s part of something bigger; in italics if it stands alone.
  3. Title of container, in italics: the website, journal, book or platform that holds it.
  4. Other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location, separated by commas. Location means page numbers, a DOI or a URL.

That’s why a YouTube video and a journal article look so similar in MLA: both are a titled piece inside a container.

MLA examples

Web page with an author

MLA 9th edition

Cherry, Kendra. “What Is the Zeigarnik Effect?” Verywell Mind, 4 Mar. 2025, www.verywellmind.com/zeigarnik-effect-memory-overview-4175150.

In-text: (Cherry) or Cherry

Book

MLA 9th edition

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

In-text: (Kahneman 89) or Kahneman (89)

Journal article

MLA 9th edition

Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. “The Pen Is Mightier than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note Taking.” Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 6, Apr. 2014, pp. 1159-1168, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581.

In-text: (Mueller and Oppenheimer 1160) or Mueller and Oppenheimer (1160)

Newspaper article

MLA 9th edition

Zimmer, Carl. “The Secret Life of a Coronavirus.” The New York Times, 26 Feb. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-alive-dead.html.

In-text: (Zimmer) or Zimmer

YouTube video

MLA 9th edition

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. “The Immune System Explained I – Bacteria Infection.” YouTube, 1 July 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGOcOUBi6s.

In-text: (Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell) or Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

MLA in-text citations

MLA uses the author’s surname and a page number, with no comma between them: (Kahneman 89). If the author is already named in your sentence, just give the page: Kahneman argues that… (89). Sources with no pages, like most web pages, get the author alone.

For margins, headers and the first-page heading, see the MLA format guide.

MLA questions

Is this MLA 9th edition?

Yes. It follows the MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021) and its core-elements template: author, title of source, container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, date, location.

Do I need an access date in MLA?

It’s optional, but the MLA Handbook recommends one when a web source has no publication date. Add “Accessed 14 Sept. 2026.” at the end.

How do I cite a source with three or more authors?

Give the first author (surname first), then “et al.”: Aronson, Elliot, et al. In the text: (Aronson et al. 112).

Should URLs include https://?

MLA recommends dropping “http://” and “https://” from URLs, but keeping them for DOIs, which you write as https://doi.org/….

What goes on a Works Cited page?

Every source you quote, paraphrase or summarise, sorted alphabetically, double-spaced, with a 0.5-inch hanging indent and the centred title “Works Cited”. See how to make a Works Cited page.