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Citation Style Guides

MLA 8

General Guidelines

Fonts

  • The preferred font of MLA is Times New Roman 12 pt.

Margins

  • Margins should be 1 inch.

Indentation

  • Indent the first line of each paragraph half an inch from the left margin.

Page Numbers

  • Create a header in the upper right-hand corner that includes your last name, followed by a space with a page number; number all pages consecutively with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), one-half inch from the top and flush with the right margin. (Note: Your instructor or other readers may ask that you omit last name/page number header on your first page. Always follow instructor guidelines.)

Spacing

  • The entire document should be double spaced.

Quotations

  • Quotes longer than 4 lines should be written as a block of text a half an inch from the left margin.

Major Changes in the 8th Edition

Abbreviations

  • Common terms like editor, edited by, translator, and review are no longer abbreviated.
  • Volume and Number are abbreviated vol. and no. (ex. vol. 8, no. 2) instead of listing the two with a dot between them (ex. x.cc).
  • Publishers' names are given in full, except business words like Company (Co.) are dropped and, for academic presses, the abbreviations U (University), P (Press), and UP (University Press) are used.

Authors

  • When a source has three or more authors, only the first one shown in the source is given. It is then followed by et al. This is true in works-cited entries and in in-text citations.

Books and Other Printed Works

  • Page numbers in the works-cited list (not in the in-text citations) are preceded by p. (for a single page) or pp. (for multiple pages).
  • For books, the city of publication is no longer given.
  • Do not give the medium (print, electronic book, etc.) in citations.

Journals

  • If an issue of a journal is dated with a month or a season, the month or season is now always cited along with the year.

Online Works

  • The URL (without http:// or https://) is always given for a web source. A permalink, if available, is preferred to a URL.
  • The citing of DOIs, or the Digital Object Identifier, are encouraged.
  • Citing the date of access is optional.
  • Use the date of access for Web sources that do not list a publication date.
  • No longer use placeholders for unknown information like n.d. ("no date"). If facts missing from a work are available in a trustworthy external resource, they are cited in square brackets. Otherwise, they are omitted entirely.

Publishers

  • A forward slash (/) separates the names of co-publishers.
  • If the publisher name is the same as the Web site title, omit the publisher name.

Formatting

  • Indentations for long quotations in text is now 1/2 inch.

Common Abbreviations

Abbreviation Word
ch. Chapter
dept. Department
ed. Edition
e.g. For example
et al. And others
etc. And so forth
i.e. That is
no. Number
P Press
p., pp. Page, pages
par. Paragraph
qtd. In Quoted in
rev. Revised
sec. Section
trans. Translation
U University

Please note: If you are ever unsure of an abbreviation, it is always best to spell it out.

Articles
Article, Print Journal

Hannah, Daniel K. "The Private Life, the Public Stage: Henry James in Recent Fiction." Journal of Modern Literature, vol.30, no.3, 2007, pp. 70-94.

Article, Online Library Database

Hannah, Daniel K. "The Private Life, the Public Stage: Henry James in Recent Fiction." Journal of Modern Literature, vol.30, no.3, 2007, pp. 70-94. JSTOR, jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.uwf.edu/stable/30053134.

NOTE: When formatting your works cited page, make sure your citations are double spaced with a hanging indent. 

Books
Book, Single Author

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera. Vintage, 1988.

Book, Two Authors

Casell, Kay Ann and Uma Hiremath. Reference and Information Services in the 21st Century: An Introduction. Neal-Schuman, 2004.

Book, Three or More Authors

Robbins, Chandler S., et al. Birds of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. Golden, 1966.

A Work (e.g., essay, short story) in an anthology or compilation

Kimball, Jean. "Growing Up Together: Joyce and Psychoanalysis, 1900-1922." Joyce through the Ages: A Nonlinear View, edited by Michael Patrick Gillespie, UP of Florida, 1999, pp. 25-45.

Book, with Translator or other Contributors

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, Viking, 1996.

NOTE: When formatting your works cited page, make sure your citations are double spaced with a hanging indent. 

Web Sources
Article, Web Page

"Depression." mayo Clinic, 7 July 2014, mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/basics/definition/con-20032977.

Website, Whole Site

The Purdue Owl Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl.

NOTE: When formatting your works cited page, make sure your citations are double spaced with a hanging indent. 

Video
Video

RotoBaller. "RotoBaller MLB: Top Fantasy Baseball Catcher Dynasty League Prospects for 2016." YouTube, commentary by Raphael Rabe,21 Mar. 2016, youtu.be/gk645_7TA6c.

Interview

Personal Interview

Smith, Jane. Personal interview. 19 May 2014.

NOTE: When formatting your works cited page, make sure your citations are double spaced with a hanging indent. 

In-Text Citations

  • One Author: (Brown 25).
  • Two Authors: (Brown and Jones 35).
  • Three or More Authors: (Brown et al. 45).
  • Corporate Author: (American Red Cross 75).
  • Indirect Source: (qtd. In Brown 26).
  • Repeated Use of Source: (Campbell 101,107).
    • Repeated use of source means you have used (mostly summary or paraphrase) more than one page of an authors work in your paragraph.
  • ​Multiple Texts by the Same Author: (Brown, Policy 25).
    • Add the title of the work between the author's name and the page number.
  • ​No Author Listed: ("Dangerous Tobacco" 21).
    • Use the title of the work and the page number(s).
    • NOTE: Using a source with no listed author should raise a credibility issue.
  • No Page Numbers: (Brown).
    • If a source has no marked numbers (as in page numbers or paragraph numbers), do not count paragraph numbers yourself. No number can be provided as a marker if the document contains no printed numbers of any kind.