MLA 9th Edition: Citing Sources in Literature and Humanities
How to build Works Cited entries with MLA's 'core elements' approach, with examples for books, articles and websites.
Dr. Omar Haddad
· 6 min read
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is used in literature, languages and the humanities. Instead of a separate rule for every source type, MLA 9 asks you to list a set of core elements in a fixed order.
The core elements
- Author.
- Title of source.
- Title of container,
- Other contributors,
- Version,
- Number,
- Publisher,
- Publication date,
- Location.
In-text citations
MLA uses author-page citations with no comma and no 'p.': (Achebe 45). If you name the author in your sentence, give only the page: Achebe describes... (45).
Works Cited examples
Book
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Penguin Classics, 2006.
Journal article
Rossi, Giulia. "Memory and the Postwar Novel." Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 58, no. 2, 2021, pp. 1-20.
Website
"Chinua Achebe." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/chinua-achebe. Accessed 12 Oct. 2026.