The Modern Language Association (MLA) style is commonly used for references and citations in papers written for humanities and liberal arts disciplines such as English, literature, cultural studies, modern languages, and others. An MLA reference page is a separate page at the end of a paper that includes full citations for all of the sources that were referenced in the body of the paper. The reference page allows readers to readily locate the sources that were cited to support points made throughout the paper.
For a research paper or longer project, the references should be presented on a separate page at the end titled “Works Cited” in plain font (e.g. Times New Roman) and centered at the top of the page. All citations should be double-spaced throughout and use a hanging indent for each entry, which means that the first line of each entry is aligned flush with the left margin while any additional lines are indented 0.5 inches. Alphabetizing the list by author’s last name or title if no author is provided is also an important requirement. The page number should continue numbering from the last page of text.
For an source appearing in print, the basic format for a citation and entry on the reference page would include the author’s name, the title of the source, publisher location, publisher name, year of publication, and medium of publication. For example, a print book citation would include:
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher Name, Year Published. Print.
While for a journal article from a subscription database, the reference entry would contain:
Last Name, First Name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal Volume Number, Issue Number (Year Published): Page Range. Database Name. Date Accessed.
Some additional guidelines for reference page entries according to MLA style include:
Use only the author’s surname and first name initial for multiple works by the same author.
For articles with three or more authors, list all authors in the order in which they appear on the source.
If the author name is unknown, alphabetize the source by its title, ignoring any initial articles (A, An, The). Place the title in italics and end with a period.
Capitalize all major words in journal, magazine, and newspaper titles but book and article titles are in title case capitalization. Italicize journal, magazine, and book titles. Use quotation marks for articles and chapters.
Provide both the URL and the date accessed for any online sources without a print counterpart or stable page numbers. It is not necessary to include access dates for subscription databases.
Provide page range information, if available, for print sources. For online sources, provide paragraph numbers when available instead of page numbers.
Be consistent using the same punctuation, abbreviations, capitalization style on all reference entries.
Here is a sample MLA reference page with correctly formatted entries for various sources:
Works Cited
Boyle, Tony. Shakespeare Live! New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1998. Print.
Farquharson, Clara. “Pre-Raphaelite Painting Techniques.” Journal of Art History 33.4 (2004): 234-56. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Jan. 2022.
Friedman, Max Paul, ed. Rethinking Anti-Semitism in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Ebook Central Academic Complete.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The Atlantic, Aug. 1963, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-birmingham-jail/552461/. Accessed 15 Mar. 2022.
Myint, Myanmar. “Introduction to International Finance.” Finance Online, 17 Apr. 2020, https://financeonline.edu/international-finance/. Paragraph 5.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon & Schuster, 2009.
Takashi, Murakami. Colorful. Tokyo: Little Brown Japan, 2003.
Weller, Sam. “Anthropic Announces $135 Million Series B to Scale Constitutional AI.” VentureBeat, 16 Mar. 2022, https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/16/anthropic-announces-135-million-series-b-to-scale-constitutional-ai/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2022.