The Modern Language Association (MLA) regulates the citation rules for most scientific works in the humanities. You can ensure that you are following proper citation rules in MLA format by gathering as much information as possible from the magazines and web pages you cite. Essays in MLA format should be accompanied by a Works Cited section indicating the sources you used. Learn how to cite articles in MLA format.
Step
Part 1 of 6: Author
Step 1. Begin the citation by including the names of the authors
Write the last name first followed by the first name, separating the two with a comma. This rule applies to citations of online and print magazines, newspapers, reviews, editorials and scientific articles.
- If there are two authors, put the word and between them. Include a comma and the word and (without the preceding comma) if there are three authors. You must include up to three names of authors associated with the work.
- If an article has more than 3 authors, then you need to include the first author's name and then put "et al" after it.
Step 2. Put a period after the names of the authors
Step 3. Ignore the author's name if the article is unknown
Do not include the word anonymous at the beginning of the quote.
Part 2 of 6: Title
Step 1. Put the title of the article in quotation marks
Put a colon between the title and subtitle.
Step 2. Write every word in the title in capital letters, except for article words like a and the.
Step 3. Put a period after the title, before the quotation marks at the end of the title
Part 3 of 6: Publication Name
Step 1. Enter the name of the publication or journal
Step 2. Include the name of the publication in italics
Step 3. If you are citing a scientific journal, list the volume of the journal after the publication title
Do not include journal volumes in italics. Do not put a full stop before the journal name and volume.
Step 4. Don't put a period before the issue date section
Part 4 of 6: Issue Date
Step 1. Enter the date of issue
Include the day, month and year format without being separated by commas from each other.
Step 2. Include the year of publication in parentheses
Enter the year in 4-digit format.
Step 3. Include a colon after the date of issue
Part 5 of 6: Pages and Medium
Step 1. Include the page number of the cited article
Include single page numbers for short articles. For longer articles, list the pages from start to finish and separate them with a line between the two
Step 2. Put a period after the page number
Step 3. Determine the medium of the cited article
Usually listed with the words Print or Online.
Step 4. Put a period after listing the medium
Part 6 of 6: Quote Insert
Step 1. Include the author's name and page number when you quote or paraphrase a sentence in your research paper
Include this information in parentheses.
