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Welcome to the Quabbin Media Center: MLA Citations

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About Citing Sources

Use this page to learn how to properly cite sources in MLA format. 

Citation Elements

An MLA citation is made up of these elements, in this order:

1. Author.
2. Title of source.
3. Title of container,
4. Other Contributors,
5. Version,
6. Number,
7. Publisher,
8. Publication date,
9. Location.

Citation Layout

Your citation should follow the proper MLA guidelines:

  • Times New Roman, size 12 font
  • double spaced
  • include a hanging indent (5 space indent on every line of the citation after the first)

It should be compiled in this order, following the proper stylization:

Author's Last Name, Author's First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Container,

Version, Number,  Publication Date, Publisher's Name, Location/URL.

Locating Citation Information on a Website

This example citation was made using the web article below. Scroll to see where each element was identified on the web page and how it's properly formatted in an MLA citation:

Rannard, Georgina. "Past Seven Years Hottest on Record - EU Satellite Data." BBC, 10 Jan

2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59915690.

 

Additional Tips

  • "Title of Container" means the title of the book, website, journal, or specific database you're citing from.
  • When citing a webpage, if the website title and the publisher are the same, you can omit the publisher from the citation. 
  • If you can't find an element, or if the element isn't applicable to the nature of the source, than you can omit it.

Additional Resources

Have a research or citation question? Purdue OWL's extensive writing resources will answer many of your questions.