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MLA Citation Style 9th Edition

This guide will help you cite sources in MLA Citation Style 9th Edition.

Journal Article from a Database

Citation Recipe

  1. Author.    DeCarlo, John.
  2. Title of source.      "Mother and Son: The Dynamics of Hamlet's Cartesian Madness."
  3. Title of container,     Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry,
  4. Other contributors,    
  5. Version,
  6. Number,     vol. 6, no. 4,
  7. Publishers,  
  8. Publication date,     winter 2011,
  9. Location.     pp. 51-60.

Container 2 (in this case the database that the article was retrieved from):

  1. Title of container,    MLA International Bibliography,
  2. Other contributors,    
  3. Version,
  4. Number,
  5. Publishers, 
  6. Publication date,  
  7. Location.     https://doi.org/10.5840/jphilnepal20116146

Example

In-Text Citation

(DeCarlo 55)

Works Cited

DeCarlo, John. "Mother and Son: The Dynamics of Hamlet's Cartesian Madness." Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry, vol. 6, no. 4, winter 2011, pp. 51-60. MLA International Bibliography, https://doi.org/10.5840/jphilnepal20116146

Duke, Nell K., et al. "The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction." The Reading Teacher, vol. 74, no. 6, May-June 2021, pp. 663-672. Wiley Online Library. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/trtr.1993

(In text: Duke et al. 667)

Lesser, Zachary, and Peter Stallybrass. "The First Literary Hamlet and the Commonplacing of Professional Plays." Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 4, winter 2008, pp. 371-420. Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.0.0040

In text: (Lesser and Stallybrass 380)

Tips

Check How to Build a Citation to learn how to find and format individual elements of the citation.

If an element is not present (e.g., other contributors), leave it out.

See the MLA Handbook for more examples.

If your article has a DOI (digital object identifier) use that number as the "Location" element, in lieu of a URL. The DOI should be prefaced with https://doi.org/ if the DOI does not already include this portion (5.93).

When providing a URL for a journal within an article database, look for the permalink (5.94). This link is different from the one found in a web browser address bar.

When providing a URL, the link should be live (clickable). You can usually omit the "https://" protocol, unless omitting the protocol breaks the link (5.95).