MLA Works Cited page: format and examples

The Works Cited page is where your reader goes to find each source you used. Every citation in your text, such as (Rivera 45), points to one entry on this page, so the two must match: the name or title that starts the entry is the same one that appears in your in-text citation. This guide follows the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook, published in 2021 and still the current version.

How to format the Works Cited page

• Start the list on a new page after the last page of your paper (and after any endnotes).
• Keep the same header as the rest of the paper: your last name and the page number in the top right corner.
• Type the title Works Cited, centered, at the top. Do not bold, underline or italicize it, and do not put it in quotation marks.
• Double-space everything, both within entries and between them. Do not add extra blank lines between entries.
• Give every entry a hanging indent of 0.5 inch: the first line starts at the left margin and the lines after it are indented.
• List the entries in alphabetical order by the first word of each entry, usually the author's last name.
• Use the same font, size and one-inch margins as the rest of the paper.
• If you cite only one source, title the page Work Cited.

The MLA template of core elements

MLA 9 does not give you a separate formula for every kind of source. Instead, you build each entry from the same list of core elements, always in the same order, and skip any that do not apply. A container is the larger work that holds your source: the journal that holds an article, the website that holds a page, the collection that holds an essay.

The mark in the third column is what normally follows each element. Whatever element comes last in a container takes a period instead. When a source sits inside two containers, such as a journal article you found in a library database, add the second container's title and location after the first container's period.

How to write author names

• One author: last name, comma, first name, period. Example: Rivera, Ana.
• Two authors: reverse only the first name, then give the second name in normal order. Example: Rivera, Ana, and Tomas Cho.
• Three or more authors: give the first author, a comma and et al. Example: Rivera, Ana, et al.
• An organization as author: give its full name. If the same organization also published the work, skip the author and start with the title; the organization then goes in the publisher slot.
• Editors of a whole collection: add editor or editors after the names. Example: Lee, Grace, and Omar Haddad, editors.
• No author: start the entry with the title.
• Keep middle names or initials as the source shows them. Example: Natarajan, Priya K.

Italics or quotation marks for titles?

Italicize the title of anything that stands on its own: books, films, websites, journals, magazines, newspapers, albums and TV series. Put quotation marks around the title of anything that is part of a larger whole: articles, chapters, essays in a collection, poems, web pages, songs and single episodes. Write titles in title case: capitalize the first and last words and all major words, but not articles, short prepositions or coordinating conjunctions in the middle. Separate a subtitle from the title with a colon. See quotation marks for why the period goes inside the closing quote.

MLA Works Cited examples

For editions, translations, e-books and other book formats, see how to cite a book in MLA.

Dates, page numbers, URLs and DOIs

• Write dates day month year: 4 Mar. 2025. In the Works Cited list, abbreviate months longer than four letters (Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.) and spell out May, June and July.
• Give the most specific date the source shows. A journal may show only a year or a season (Spring 2024); a news story shows the day.
• Use p. for one page and pp. for a range: p. 8, pp. 45-67.
• For a URL, copy the address from your browser but leave off the http:// or https:// part, unless your instructor wants live links. Use a permanent link if the site offers one.
• Write a DOI as a link that begins with https://doi.org/. Prefer a DOI to a URL when the source has one, because it does not change.
• Access dates are optional in MLA 9. Add one (Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.) when the source has no publication date or is likely to change.

How to put the entries in order

• Alphabetize by the first word of each entry, which is usually the author's last name.
• When an entry starts with a title, ignore A, An and The and alphabetize by the next word. The Quiet Harbor goes under Q.
• For two or more works by the same author, write the name in full only in the first entry. In the entries after it, replace the name with three hyphens followed by a period, and order those works alphabetically by title.
• A work by one author alone comes before works that author wrote with others.
• Treat an organization's name like a person's last name: alphabetize by its first word other than A, An or The.

Sample Works Cited page

What if some information is missing?

Leave it out. MLA 9 lets you skip any element the source does not have, so a web page with no author starts with its title, and a page with no date gets an access date at the end instead. MLA does not use placeholders such as "n.d." or "no author." If a website's name and its publisher's name are essentially the same, give the name once, as the container. What you must not skip is information that exists but takes a moment to find: check the bottom of a web page, the copyright page of a book and the first page of an article.

Common Works Cited mistakes

• Bolding the title Works Cited or making it larger than the text.
• Adding the city of publication for books. MLA 9 leaves it out in nearly all cases.
• Keeping business words such as Inc., Company or Ltd. in a publisher's name. Drop them, and shorten University Press to UP (Saltmarsh UP).
• Numbering the entries or adding bullet points.
• Sorting by source type, with books first and websites after. MLA uses one alphabetical list.
• Leaving out the container, so a reader cannot tell which website or journal the article came from.
• Listing sources you read but never cited. If your teacher wants those too, ask about a separate Works Consulted list.
• Letting the page and the paper disagree, such as (Martin 4) in the text but Martins on the list.

Not sure whether you need a Works Cited page, a bibliography or a reference list? See bibliography vs. works cited vs. references. For the first page of the paper, see the MLA heading guide.