MLA Citation Guide (9th Edition): Book Reviews
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On This Page: Book Reviews
Book review - no title, book review - title refers to book being reviewed, book review - title doesn't refer to book being reviewed, abbreviating months.
In your works cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
Note : For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.
A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any , by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . https://doi.org/DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source after the name of the book's author.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . https://doi.org/DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any, by Book Author's First Name Last Name . Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . https://doi.org/DOI Number if Given.
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Citation Help for MLA, 8th Edition: Book Review
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Month Abbreviations
According to p. 95 of the MLA Handbook 8th ed. Spell out months in the body of your paper and abbreviate as follows in your works cited list: January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Multiple Authors?
Example: McGill, Ivan, John Kurt Glenn, and Alice Brockbank. The Action Learning Handbook: Powerful Techniques for Education . Rutledge Falmer, 2014.
Explanation: List the first author last name first followed by the first and middle names followed by a comma. All other authors are listed first name followed by the last name. Insert the word "and" and a comma before the last author. Note: If there are more than three authors, just list the first one followed by et al., which is Latin for and others . There is a period after al but not et. Example: Nelson, Karl, et al. Fish Is for Everyone . Penguin Press, 2016.
Bell, Madison Smartt. "Are You My Mother?" Review of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name , by Vendela Vida. The New York Times Book Review, 31 Dec. 2016, p. 10.
Explanation
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MLA Citation Guide (9th Edition): Book Reviews
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On This Page
Book review - no title.
- Title Refers to Book being Reviewed
- Title Doesn't Refer to Book being Reviewed
Note : For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.
A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any , by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source after the name of the book's author.
Khovanova, Tanya. Review of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality , by Edward Frenkel. The College Mathematics Journal , vol. 45, no. 3, May 2014, pp. 230-231. JSTOR . doi: www.jstor.org/stable/10.4169/college.math.j.45.3.230.
(Author's Last Name Page Number)
Example: (Khovanova 230)
Learn more: See the MLA Handbook , pp. 28-29
Book Review - Title Refers to Book being Reviewed
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Grosholz, Emily R. "Book Review: Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and Knowledge by Danielle Macbeth." Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 263-275, Academic Search Complete . doi: 10.5642/jhummath.20170120.
Example: (Grosholz 264)
Book Review - Title Doesn't Refer to Book being Reviewed
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Rodriques, Elias. "Lonesome for our Home." Review of Barraccon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", by Zora Neale Hurston. Nation , vol. 306, no. 18, 18 June 2018, pp. 35-39. MAS Ultra - School Edition .
Example: (Rodriques 35)
MLA Handbook
Abbreviating Months
In your works cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
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MLA Citation Guide (8th Edition): Book Reviews
- Advertisements
- Books, eBooks & Pamphlets
- Book Reviews
- Class Notes & Presentations
- Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
- Government Documents
- Images, Artwork, Charts, Graphs & Tables
- Indigenous Resources
- Interviews and Emails (Personal Communications)
- Journal Articles
- Live Performances
- Magazine Articles
- Newspaper Articles
- Primary Sources
- Religious Texts
- Social Media
- Videos & DVDs
- When Creating Digital Assignments
- Works Quoted in Another Source
- No author, no date etc
- In-Text Citation
- Sample Paper
- Annotated Bibliography
On This Page: Book Reviews
Book review - no title, book review - title refers to book being reviewed, book review - title doesn't refer to book being reviewed, abbreviating months.
In your Works Cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
Note : For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double-spaced and have a hanging indent.
A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any , by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section in the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source after the name of the book's author.
Learn more: See the MLA Handbook , pp. 28-29
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any, by Book Author's First Name Last Name . Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
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Generate accurate MLA citations for free
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- How to cite a book in MLA
How to Cite a Book in MLA | Format & Examples
Published on June 28, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on March 5, 2024.
An MLA book citation always includes the author(s) , title (italicized), publisher, and publication year in the Works Cited entry. If relevant, also include the names of any editors or translators, the edition, and the volume. “University Press” should be abbreviated to “UP” in a Works Cited entry.
The in-text citation gives the author’s last name and a page number in parentheses.
To automattically create MLA citations, try our free MLA Citation Generator .
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Table of contents
Citing a book chapter, editions of books, multi-volume books, translated books, e-books and online books, where to find information for a book citation, frequently asked questions about mla style.
Use this format if the book’s chapters are written by different authors, or if the book is a collection of self-contained works (such as stories , essays, poems or plays ). A similar format can be used to cite images from books or dictionary entries . If you cite several chapters from the same book, include a separate Works Cited entry for each one.
Start the Works Cited entry with the author and title of the chapter, followed by the book’s title, editor, publisher, and date , and end with the page range on which the chapter appears.
If there are two editors, give the full names of both. If there are more than two editors, follow the same rules as for citing multiple authors : name only the first editor followed by et al.
If you are citing a work from a book with no named editor (e.g. a collection of a single author’s poems or plays), use the same format, but leave out the editor element.
- Multiple editors
Citing a whole collection or anthology
If you refer to a whole collection without citing a specific work within it, follow the standard book citation format. Include the editor(s) where the author would usually go, with a label to identify their role.
Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting
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If the book cover or title page specifies an edition, add the edition number or name, followed by the abbreviation “ed.”, after the title. Note that versions of the Bible are treated slightly differently.
Including the original publication date
Classic books are often published and republished many times. If the original publication date is relevant or necessary to put the source in context, you can also include this directly after the title.
If you cite only one volume of a multi-volume work, include the volume number in the Works Cited entry.
If you cite more than one volume of the book, cite them as a single work and specify the total number of volumes in your Works Cited entry. In this case, the in-text citations must include the volume number as well as the page number.
- Citing a single volume
- Citing multiple volumes
If the book is translated, include the translator’s name after the title.
Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.
The citation format for an e-book depends on how you accessed it.
Books accessed online
If you accessed the book via a website or database, use the standard MLA book citation format, followed by the name of the website or database and a link to the book. Look for a DOI, stable URL or permalink. If the book was accessed as a PDF, you may note this in your reference .
Downloaded e-books
If you downloaded the book onto an e-reader device or app, you only have to add “E-book ed.” after the title.
If the e-book does not have page numbers, use an alternate locator, such as a chapter or section heading, in your in-text citation. Do not use locators that are specific to the device (e.g. Kindle locations).
The title, author, publisher, and publication year are usually found on the book’s title page. You might have to check the copyright page for the publisher and publication year.
Note that the copyright date is not always the same as the publication date. If several different years appear on the copyright page, use the most recent one.
If the book has any editors or translators named on the cover page, include them in the citation after the book’s title.
In MLA style , book titles appear in italics, with all major words capitalized. If there is a subtitle, separate it from the main title with a colon and a space (even if no colon appears in the source). For example:
The format is the same in the Works Cited list and in the text itself. However, when you mention the book title in the text, you don’t have to include the subtitle.
The title of a part of a book—such as a chapter, or a short story or poem in a collection—is not italicized, but instead placed in quotation marks.
If a source has two authors, name both authors in your MLA in-text citation and Works Cited entry. If there are three or more authors, name only the first author, followed by et al.
In MLA Style , you should cite a specific chapter or work within a book in two situations:
- When each of the book’s chapters is written by a different author.
- When the book is a collection of self-contained works (such as poems , plays , or short stories ), even if they are all written by the same author.
If you cite multiple chapters or works from the same book, include a separate Works Cited entry for each chapter.
Some source types, such as books and journal articles , may contain footnotes (or endnotes) with additional information. The following rules apply when citing information from a note in an MLA in-text citation :
- To cite information from a single numbered note, write “n” after the page number, and then write the note number, e.g. (Smith 105n2)
- To cite information from multiple numbered notes, write “nn” and include a range, e.g. (Smith 77nn1–2)
- To cite information from an unnumbered note, write “un” after the page number, with a space in between, e.g. (Jones 250 un)
You must include an MLA in-text citation every time you quote or paraphrase from a source (e.g. a book , movie , website , or article ).
Cite this Scribbr article
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
McCombes, S. (2024, March 05). How to Cite a Book in MLA | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/mla/book-citation/
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Cite Your Sources in MLA 9th: Book Reviews
- Books and eBooks
- Encyclopedia and Dictionary Entries
- Government Documents
- Images, Artwork, Charts, Graphs and Tables
- Journal Articles
- Newspaper and Magazine Articles
- Social Media
- Videos and Other Multimedia
- Advertisements
- Book Reviews
- ChatGPT and Generative AI
- Emails, Interviews, and Personal Communications
- Religious Texts
- Formatting Your Paper
- How to Identify Source Types
- Other Styles
How to Cite Book Reviews
Book review without a title.
Review Author(s). Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any , by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Publication Date, pp. Page Numbers. Name of Database , https://doi.org/DOI [if any].
Khovanova, Tanya. Review of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality , by Edward Frenkel. The College Mathematics Journal , vol. 45, no. 3, May 2014, pp. 230-231. JSTOR , https://doi.org/10.4169/college.math.j.45.3.230.
Book Review With a Title
Review Author(s). "Title of Review with Book Title Italicized." Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Publication Date, pp. Page Numbers. Name of Database , https://doi.org/DOI [if any].
Grosholz, Emily R. "Book Review: Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and Knowledge by Danielle Macbeth." Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 263-275. Academic Search Complete , https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120.
How to Format Author Names
- Works Cited List
- In-Text Citation
Last Name, First Name or Last Name, First Name Middle Name or Initial (if provided in source)
Name Examples:
Anzaldúa, Gloria Kendi, Ibram X. Wallace, David Foster
Citation Example:
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza . 4th ed., Aunt Lute Books, 2012.
Two Authors
Last Name, First Name, and First Name Last Name
Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. Sage, 2005.
Three or More Authors
First Author's Last Name, First Name, et al.
Chan, Sabrina S., et al. Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationships, and Vocation. InterVarsity Press, 2022.
Group or Corporate Author
If the group author is different from publisher.
If the group author and the publisher are different entities, list the Group Name as the author.
Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. Employability Skills: Creating My Future . Nelson, 1996.
If the Group Author and Publisher Are the Same
If the group author and the publisher are the same, skip the author and list the title first. Then, list the group author only as the publisher.
Fair Housing—Fair Lending . Aspen Law & Business, 1985.
If a source has no author, skip the author and start with the title. Do not use "Anonymous" as the author name.
"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.
(Last Name Page Number)
(Anzaldúa 30)
(First Author's Last Name and Second Author's Last Name Page Number)
(Wykes and Gunter 53)
(First Author's Last Name et al. Page Number)
(Chan et al. 97)
(Group Name Page Number)
(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation 230)
If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.
( Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work" Page Number)
( Fair Housing 15)
("How to Teach")
Frequently Asked Questions
How do i format dates.
Dates in your Works Cited list should be formatted like this: Day Month Year. Month names should be abbreviated using the list below. Example: 17 Oct. 2021.
For publication dates, include as much information as the source provides. This may be a full date, only the month and year, a season (such as Spring 2019), or just a publication year.
Month Abbreviations
In your Works Cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
What is a DOI?
Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are unique numbers or hyperlinks assigned to some online resources, such as journal articles, to make them easier to find.
If a DOI is provided for a source, include it at the end of your citation after any page numbers. In your Works Cited list, you should always format a DOI as a URL beginning with "https://doi.org/" followed immediately by the DOI number.
Example: For DOI "10.5642/jhummath.20170120," the URL version would be: https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120
If no DOI is provided but a permalink or stable link is present, you can use that instead.
What if some information is missing?
If a source is missing information that you need for your Works Cited citation, you can skip that element and move on to the next element in the citation.
Examples: Some sources don't have an author; in this case, we skip the author and start our citation with the title. Most academic journals are published in volumes and issues, but some only have volumes; in this case, we list the volume number and skip the issue number.
What if I don't know which source type I'm citing?
If you're not sure what type of source you're working with, don't worry! This is a very common challenge. Check out our page on Identifying Source Types .
What if I need to cite multiple sources by the same author?
Works Cited List: To cite two or more works by the same author, give the name in the first entry only. For subsequent works by the same author, replace the author's name with three hyphens followed by a period (---.), which signifies that the name is the same as the preceding entry. Alphabetize works with the same author by title.
In-Text Citations: To distinguish multiple works by the same author, add a comma followed by a shortened version of the title (usually the first 2-4 words) between the author name and the page number. Example: (Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera 38). Alternately, you can mention the author and title in the sentence, and then only include the page number.
For page numbers, should I use p. or pp.?
If you are citing a single page, use "p." If you are citing multiple pages, use "pp."
Example: If an article runs from page 10 to page 15, your citation should say "pp. 10-15" because it covers multiple pages. If it's a short article that only appears on page 11, your citation should say "p. 11".
More Information on MLA 9th
- Pierce Library's MLA 9th Quick Citation Guide Downloadable PDF with sample citations (including in-text) for different types of sources and a sample Works Cited page.
- MLA Style Center Tips for working in MLA Style, answers to common questions, and more.
- Purdue OWL MLA 9 Formatting & Style Guide Very thorough overview of MLA 9th with examples for how to construct both in-text and Works Cited entries.
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MLA Citation Guide: Book Reviews
- Advertisements
- Books, eBooks & Pamphlets
- Book Reviews
- Class Notes & Presentations
- Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
- Government Documents
- Images, Artwork, Charts, Graphs & Tables
- Interviews and Emails (Personal Communications)
- Journal Articles
- Magazine Articles
- Newspaper Articles
- Primary Sources
- Religious Texts
- Social Media
- Videos & DVDs
- When Creating Digital Assignments
- When Information Is Missing
- Works Quoted in Another Source
- In-Text Citation
- Works Cited List
- Annotated Bibliography
- How Did We Do?
Abbreviating Months
In your works cited list, abbreviate months as follows:
January = Jan. February = Feb. March = Mar. April = Apr. May = May June = June July = July August = Aug. September = Sept. October = Oct. November = Nov. December = Dec.
Spell out months fully in the body of your paper.
Note : For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.
A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.
Book Review - No Title
Author's Last Name, First Name. Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any , by Book Author's First Name Last Name. Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source after the name of the book's author.
Learn more: See the MLA Handbook , pp. 28-29
Book Review - Title Refers to Book being Reviewed
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
Note : If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Book Review - Title Doesn't Refer to Book being Reviewed
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Review of Title of Book: Subtitle if Any, by Book Author's First Name Last Name . Name of Journal , vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp. First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database . doi: DOI Number if Given.
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- MyExperience
MLA Citation Style, 9th Edition: Book Review
- In-Text References
- Works Cited
- One Author or Editor
- Multiple Authors or Editors
- Author and Editor
- Author and Translator
- Organization as Author
- Anonymous Work
- Chapter from an Edited Work
- Introduction, Preface, Foreword, or Afterword
- Multivolume Work
- Edition Other than the First
- Dictionary or Encyclopedia
- Journal Article
- Magazine Article
- Newspaper Article
- Book Review
- Basic Webpage
- Video Recording
- Sound Recording
- YouTube Video
- Interview or Personal Communication
- Lecture or Presentation
- Thesis or Dissertation
- Indirect Source
- Government Document
- AI Generated Content
Book Review - Examples
In-Text:
(Powers 10)
Works Cited:
NOTE: If a review is untitled, include a title which incorporates the work that is being reviewed:
Help & Guide Contents
Home General Guidelines In-Text Reference Works Cited Books One Author or Editor Multiple Authors or Editors Author and Editor Author and Translator Organization as Author Anonymous Work Chapter from an Edited Work Introduction, Preface, Foreword, or Afterword Multivolume Work Edition Other than the First Dictionary or Encyclopedia E-Book Articles Journal Article Magazine Article Newspaper Article Book Review Websites Basic Webpage Blog Post Tweet Audiovisual Media Video Recording Sound Recording YouTube Video Other Sources Interview or Personal Communication Lecture or Presentation Thesis or Dissertation Scripture Indirect Source Government Document Plagiarism
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MLA Citation Examples
- Volume and Issue Numbers
- Page Numbers
- Citing a Source within a Source
- DOIs and URLs
- In-Text Citations
- Academic Journals
- Encyclopedia Articles
- Book, Film, and Product Reviews
Review without a specific title
Review with a title.
- Online Classroom Materials
- Conference Papers
- Technical and Research Reports
- Dissertations and Theses
- Interviews and E-mail Messages
- AI: ChatGPT, etc.
- Review of Title of Work , by Author.
- Title of Journal ,
- Volume number, issue number,
- Publication Date,
- Page number(s).
- Title of Database ,
- DOI or URL.
Reviewer. Review of Title of Work , by Author. Title of Journal , vol. #, no. #, date, pp. #-#. Title of Database , DOI or URL.
Conn, David R. Review of The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate , by Amy Brady and Tajja Isen. Library Journal , vol. 147, no. 4, Apr. 2022, p. 104. EBSCOhost , ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=155859448&site=eds-live&scope=site.
- "Title of Review."
Reviewer. "Title of Review." Review of Title of Work , by Author. Title of Journal , vol. #, no. #, date, pp. ##-##. Title of Database , DOI or URL.
Grimes, William. "Beyond Mandalay, the Road to Isolation and Xenophobia." Review of The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma , by Thant Myint-U. New York Times , 13 Dec. 2006, pp. E8+. ProQuest , ezproxy.umgc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/433471566?accountid=14580.
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MLA Style (9th Edition) Citation Guide: Books & Ebooks
- Introduction to MLA Style
- Journal Articles
- Magazine/Newspaper Articles
- Books & Ebooks
- Government & Legal Documents
- Biblical Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Videos/DVDs/TV Shows
- How to Cite: Other
- 9th Edition Updates
- Additional Help
Table of Contents
Book in print, book with editor(s) but no author, translated book, chapters, short stories, essays, or articles from a book (anthology or collection), an introduction, preface, foreword, or afterword, article in a reference book (e.g. encyclopedias, dictionaries).
Note: For your Works Cited list, all citations should be double spaced and have a hanging indent.
A "hanging indent" means that each subsequent line after the first line of your citation should be indented by 0.5 inches.
Authors/Editors
An author can be a person but can also be an organization, or company. These are called group or corporate authors.
If you are citing a chapter from a book that has an editor, the author of the chapter is listed first, and is the name listed in the in-text citation.
Capitalize the first letter of every important word in the title. You do not need to capitalize words such as: in, of, or an.
If there is a colon (:) in the title, include what comes after the colon (also known as the subtitle).
You have the option to use the shortened name of the publisher by abbreviating "University" and "Press" (e.g. Oxford UP, not Oxford University Press).
You also have the option to remove articles (A, An, The), business abbreviations (e.g. Co., Inc.) and descriptive words (e.g. Books, House, Press, Publishers).
The format of all dates is: Date Month (shortened) Year. e.g. 5 Sept. 2012.
Whether to give the year alone or include a month and day depends on your source: write the full date as you find it there.
If no date is listed, omit it unless you can find that information available in a reliable source. In that case the date is cited in square brackets. e.g. [2008]
Page Numbers
Page number on your Works Cited page (but not for in-text citations) are now proceeded by p. for a single page number and pp. for a range of page numbers. E.g. p. 156 or pp. 79-92.
Access Date
Date of access is optional in MLA 8th/9th edition; it is recommended for pages that may change frequently or that do not have a copyright/publication date.
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book . City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.
Note : The city of publication should only be used if the book was published before 1900, if the publisher has offices in more than one country, or if the publisher is unknown in North America.
Works Cited List Example:
Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History . Walker, 2002.
In-Text Citation Example:
(Author's Last Name Page Number)
Example: (Kurlansky 10)
Two Authors
Last Name, First Name of First Author, and First Name Last Name of Second Author. Title of Book: Subtitle if Any. Edition if given and is not first edition, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication.
Note: Only the first author listed appears in "Last Name, First Name" format. Authors' names are separated by a comma. Before the last author to be listed, add the word "and."
Jacobson, Diane L., and Robert Kysar. A Beginner's Guide to the Books of the Bible, Augsburg, 1991.
(Author's Last Name and Author's Last Name Page Number)
Example: (Jacobson and Kysar 25)
Three or More Authors
Last Name, First Name of First Author, et al. Title of Book: Subtitle if Any. Edition if given and is not first edition, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication.
Note: If you have three or more authors list only the first author's name followed by et al. instead of listing all authors names. For example Smith, John, et al. The first author is the first name listed on the work you are citing, not the first name alphabetically.
Nickels, William, et al. Understanding Business. 9th ed., McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2016.
(First Author's Last Name et al. Page Number)
Example: (Nickels et al. 5)
eBook from a Library Database
Last Name, First Name of First Author, et al. Title of Book: Subtitle if Any. Edition if given and is not first edition, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication. Name of eBook Database, doi:DOI number/URL/Permalink.
Calhoun, Craig. Sociology in America: A History . U of Chicago P, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central , ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/up/detail.action?docID=408466&pq-origsite=primo.
(Author's Last Name Page Number)
Example: (Calhoun 53)
eBook for Kindle or other eBook Reader
Note: The MLA uses the term "eBook" to refer to publications formatted specifically for reading with an eBook reader device (e.g., a Kindle) or a corresponding web application, which will not have URLs or DOIs. Citations will be very similar to physical book citations; just add the word "eBook" in the "version" slot of the MLA template (i.e., after the author, the title of the source, the title of the container, and the names of any other contributors).
Silva, Paul J. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing , eBook, American Psychological Association, 2007.
Example: (Silva 30)
Note : When no page numbers are listed on an eBook, cite the chapter number instead in your in-text citation. Example: (Smith ch. 2).
Last Name of editor, First Name, editor(s). Title of Book: Subtitle if Any. Edition if given and is not first edition, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of Publication.
Wolfteich, Claire E., editor. Invitation to Practical Theology: Catholic Voices and Visions . Paulist, 2014.
(Last name page number)
Example: (Wolfteich 103)
Electronic Materials
(More than one editor)
Kidwell, Jeremy, and Sean Doherty, editors. Theology and Economics: A Christian Vision of the Common Good. eBook, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
(Last name page number)
Example: (Kidwell and Doherty 103)
If you want to emphasize the work rather than the translator, cite as you would any other book. Add “translated by” and follow with the name(s) of the translator(s).
Boitani, Piero. The Bible and Its Rewritings . Translated by Anita Weston, Oxford UP, 1999.
Example: (Boitani 89)
Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine . Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey, eBook, Floating Press, 1921.
Example: (Augustine 65)
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Short Story, Essay, or Article." Title of Book: Subtitle if Any, edited by Editor's First Name and Last Name, Edition if given and is not first, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication, Page numbers of the essay, article, or short story.
Boys, Mary C. “Learning in the Presence of the Other: Feminisms and the Interreligious Encounter.” Faith and Feminism: Ecumenical Essays , edited by Diane B. Lipsett, Westminster John Knox Press, 2014, pp. 103-114.
Note: The first author's name listed is the author of the chapter/essay/short story.
Note: If there is no editor given you may leave out that part of the citation.
Example: (Boys 110)
When citing an introduction, a preface, a foreword, or an afterword, write the name of the author(s) of the piece you are citing. Then give the name of the part being cited, which should not be italicized or enclosed in quotation marks; in italics, provide the name of the work and the name of the author of the introduction/preface/foreword/afterword. Finish the citation with the details of publication and page range.
Farrell, Thomas B. Introduction. Norms of Rhetorical Culture , by Farrell, Yale UP, 1993, pp. 1-13.
(Farrell 5)
If the writer of the piece is different from the author of the complete work, then write the full name of the principal work's author after the word "By." For example, if you were to cite Hugh Dalziel Duncan’s introduction of Kenneth Burke’s book Permanence and Change, you would write the entry as follows:
Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Introduction. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, by Kenneth Burke, 1935, 3rd ed., U of California P, 1984, pp. xiii-xliv.
(Duncan xiv)
For entries in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works, cite the entry name as you would any other work in a collection but do not include the publisher information. Also, if the reference book is organized alphabetically, as most are, do not list the volume or the page number of the article or item.
"Ideology." The American Heritage Dictionary , 3rd ed., Dell, 1997, p. 369.
("Ideology" 369)
Online Reference book
Isaacson, Joel. "Monet, Claude." Grove Art Online , Oxford Art Online , www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T059077.
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Works-Cited-List Entries
How to cite a book.
To create a basic works-cited-list entry for a book, list the author, the title, the publisher, and the publication date. You may need to include other elements depending on the type of book you are citing (e.g., an edited book, a translation) and how it is published (e.g., in print, as an e-book, online). Below are sample entries for books along with links to posts containing many other examples.
Book by One Author
Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall . Picador, 2010.
Book by an Unknown Author
Beowulf . Translated by Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy, edited by Sarah Anderson, Pearson, 2004.
An Edited Book
Sánchez Prado, Ignacio M., editor. Mexican Literature in Theory . Bloomsbury, 2018.
More Examples
Anthologies
Books Series
Edited Collections
Multivolume Works
Translations
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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / MLA Format / MLA Book Citation
How to Cite a Book in MLA
Books are written works or compositions that have been published. They are no longer restricted to paper and have evolved into the online realm.
Below are examples of how to cite different types of books in MLA 9. If you need a different citation style, there is also a guide on citing a book in APA .
In MLA, a basic book citation includes the following information:
- Author’s name
- Title of book
- Publisher of the book
- Year published
Additional information is needed when citing:
- Name of website or database
- Name of e-book device
- Name of the translator or editor
- Name of book editor or author
- Name of chapter author
- Page numbers or ranges used
- Volume number of the book
- City the book was published in
Citing a book in MLA (print)
View Screenshot | Cite your book
Citing a book found on a Website or database in MLA
Many books are now found online. Popular sites or databases that hold e-books include Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and EBSCO.
Cite your book
*Keep “https:” at the beginning of the URL only when citing a DOI.
Digital sources with no page numbers means that no page numbers should be included in the in-text citation.
Citing an E-book in MLA (found via an e-reader)
E-Readers are electronic devices that display e-books. Kindles and Nooks are some of the more popular e-readers available today. Individuals can purchase or borrow e-books and read them on their e-readers.
Cite your ebook
Since the page numbers of an e-book can vary across e-reader, text preferences, and other factors, you should not include a page number. This is because a consistent page number does not exist. You can include section numbers (sec., secs.) or chapter numbers (ch., chs.) instead, if they exist and you feel it would be helpful.
Citing a translated or edited book in MLA
Citing a chapter of a book in mla.
*In the above citation example, The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500-2000 is an edited book that features a chapter by Louis Montrose. The title of the chapter that he wrote is found in quotation marks (“Elizabeth Through the Looking Glass: Picturing the Queen’s Two Bodies”).
Citing a book with multiple authors in MLA
*et al. is Latin for “and others.”
Published October 20, 2011. Updated May 9, 2021.
MLA Formatting Guide
MLA Formatting
- Annotated Bibliography
- Bibliography
- Block Quotes
- et al Usage
- In-text Citations
- Paraphrasing
- Page Numbers
- Sample Paper
- Works Cited
- MLA 8 Updates
- MLA 9 Updates
- View MLA Guide
Citation Examples
- Book Chapter
- Journal Article
- Magazine Article
- Newspaper Article
- Website (no author)
- View all MLA Examples
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In the works cited: If the organization is the author and publisher, don’t include an author and start the citation with the book’s title. If the author and publisher are different, use the organization name as the author.
When the chapter’s author is different from the book’s editor or author. Chapters are usually cited when you use anthologies, multi-volume sets, or a foreword/afterword written by someone other than the book’s main author.
Place the author’s last name and the quote chapter number in parenthesis after the borrowed quote or information. Example: “Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life” (Barrie ch. 5).
MLA is the style most often used in literature, language, history, art and theater subjects.
If any important information is missing (e.g., author’s name, title, publishing date, URL, etc.), first see if you can find it in the source yourself. If you cannot, leave the information blank and continue creating your citation.
Yes! Whether you’d like to learn how to construct citations on your own, our Autocite tool isn’t able to gather the metadata you need, or anything in between, manual citations are always an option. Click here for directions on using creating manual citations.
To cite a book with multiple authors in MLA style, you need to have basic information including the authors, publication year, book title, and publisher. The templates for in-text citation and works-cited-list entry of a book written by multiple authors and some examples are given below:
In-text citation template and example:
Citation in prose:
For sources with two authors, use both full author names in prose (e.g., Harold Napoleon and Richard Harris). For sources with three or more authors, use the first name and surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues” (e.g., Harold Napoleon and others). In subsequent citations, use only the surname of the first author followed by “and others” or “and colleagues” (e.g., Napoleon and others).
First mention: Harold Napoleon and colleagues…. or Harold Napoleon and others ….
Subsequent occurrences: Napoleon and colleagues…. or Napoleon and others ….
Parenthetical:
In parenthetical citations, use only the author’s surname (e.g., Napoleon). For sources with two authors, use two surnames (e.g., Napoleon and Harris). For sources with three or more author names, use the first author’s surname followed by “et al.”
….(Napoleon et al.)
Works-cited-list entry template and example:
The title of the book is given in italics and title case.
Surname, F. M., et al. Title of the Book . Publisher, Publication Date.
Napoleon, Harold, et al. Yuuyaraq the Way of the Human Being: With Commentary . University of Alaska, 1996.
Use only the first author’s name in surname–first name order in the entry and follow it with “et al.”
A book is a printed copy, whereas an e-book is an online version and is available via different electronic media (e.g., epub and Kindle).
To cite a print book in MLA format, you need to know the names of the authors, the title of the book, publisher name, publication date, and page range (optional). You need the same information to cite an e-book, however, you will not include page numbers unless they are the same as those in the print version of the book. MLA mostly treats citations for print books and e-books the same, except for noting that the e-book version is being cited within the entry.
The templates and examples for in-text citations and works cited list entries for a book and an e-book are provided below:
In-text citation template and example for a book:
Author Surname
(Author Surname Page)
(Damasio 7)
Works cited list entry template and example:
Surname, First Name. Title of the Book . Publisher, Publication Date, Page range.
Damasio, Antonio. Emotion, Reason and the Feeling Brain . Penguin, 1994.
In-text citation template and example for an e-book:
(Author Surname)
Author’s Surname, First Name. Title of the Book . E-book ed., Publisher, Publication Date.
Davis, Barbara. The Keeper of Happy Endings . E-book ed., Lake Union Publishing, 2021.
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Organizing Research for Arts and Humanities Papers and Theses
- General Guide Information
- Developing a Topic
- What are Primary and Secondary Sources
- What are Scholarly and Non-Scholarly Sources
- Writing an Abstract
- Writing Academic Book Reviews
- Writing A Literature Review
- Using Images and other Media
Purpose of a Book Review
Note: This information is geared toward researchers in the arts and humanities. For a detailed guide on writing book reviews in the social sciences, please check the USC Libraries guide to Writing and Organizing Research in the Social Sciences , authored by Dr. Robert Labaree.
When writing an academic book review, start with a bibliographic citation of the book you are reviewing [e.g., author, title, publication information, length]. Adhere to a particular citation style, such as Chicago, MLA, or APA. Put your name at the very end of the book review text.
The basic purpose of a book review is to convey and evaluate the following:
a. what the book is about;
b. the expertise of the author(s);
c. how well the book covers its topic(s) and whether it breaks new ground;
d. the author’s viewpoint, methodology, or perspective;
e. the appropriateness of the evidence to the topical scope of the book;
f. the intended audience;
g. the arrangement of the book (chapters, illustrations) and the quality of the scholarly apparatus, such as notes and bibliographies.
Point "c. how well the book covers its topics and whether it breaks new ground" requires your engagement with the book, and can be approached in a variety of ways. The question of whether the book breaks new ground does not necessarily refer to some radical or overarching notion of originality in the author’s argument. A lot of contemporary scholarship in the arts or humanities is not about completely reorienting the discipline, nor is it usually about arguing a thesis that has never been argued before. If an author does that, that's wonderful, and you, as a book reviewer, must look at the validity of the methods that contextualize the author's new argument.
It is more likely that the author of a scholarly book will look at the existing evidence with a finer eye for detail, and use that detail to amplify and add to existing scholarship. The author may present new evidence or a new "reading" of the existing evidence, in order to refine scholarship and to contribute to current debate. Or the author may approach existing scholarship, events, and prevailing ideas from a more nuanced perspective, thus re-framing the debate within the discipline.
The task of the book reviewer is to “tease out” the book’s themes, explain them in the review, and apply a well-argued judgment on the appropriateness of the book’s argument(s) to the existing scholarship in the field.
For example, you are reviewing a book on the history of the development of public libraries in nineteenth century America. The book includes a chapter on the role of patronage by affluent women in endowing public libraries in the mid-to-late-1800s. In this chapter, the author argues that the role of women was overlooked in previous scholarship because most of them were widows who made their financial bequests to libraries in the names of their husbands. The author argues that the history of public library patronage, and moreover, of cultural patronage, should be re-read and possibly re-framed given the evidence presented in this chapter. As a book reviewer you will be expected to evaluate this argument and the underlying scholarship.
There are two common types of academic book reviews: short summary reviews, which are descriptive, and essay-length critical reviews. Both types are described further down.
[Parenthetically, writing an academic/scholarly book review may present an opportunity to get published.]
Short summary book reviews
For a short, descriptive review, include at least the following elements:
a. the bibliographic citation for the book;
b. the purpose of the book;
c. a summary of main theme(s) or key points;
d. if there is space, a brief description of the book’s relationship to other books on the same topic or to pertinent scholarship in the field.
e. note the author's affiliation and authority, as well as the physical content of the book, such as visual materials (photographs, illustrations, graphs) and the presence of scholarly apparatus (table of contents, index, bibliography, footnotes, endnotes, credit for visual materials);
f. your name and affiliation.
Critical or essay-length book reviews
For a critical, essay-length book review consider including the following elements, depending on their relevance to your assignment:
b. an opening statement that ought to peak the reader’s interest in the book under review
c. a section that points to the author’s main intentions;
d. a section that discusses the author’s ideas and the book’s thesis within a scholarly perspective. This should be a critical assessment of the book within the larger scholarly discourse;
e. if you found errors in the book, point the major ones and explain their significance. Explain whether they detract from the thesis and the arguments made in the book;
f. state the book's place within a strand of scholarship and summarize its importance to the discipline;
g. include information about the author's affiliation and authority, as well as the physical content of the book, such as visual materials (photographs, illustrations, graphs) and the presence of scholarly apparatus (table of contents, index, bibliography, footnotes, endnotes, credit for visual materials);
h. indicate the intended readership of the book and whether the author succeeds in engaging the audience on the appropriate level;
i. your name and affiliation.
Good examples of essay-length reviews may be found in the scholarly journals included in the JSTOR collection, in the New York Review of Books , and similar types of publications, and in cultural publications like the New Yorker magazine.
Remember to keep track of your sources, regardless of the stage of your research. The USC Libraries have an excellent guide to citation styles and to citation management software .
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Book Reviews: A Finding Guide: Introduction
- Introduction
- Online Resources
- Print Resources
- Resources by Date
- Need Help? Ask A Librarian
Introduction to Book Review Searching
Reviews are important tools for evaluating books. Online databases have made finding book reviews quicker and easier. This brief guide lists the major resources available to Cornell users for finding book reviews. The print resources listed are available in the reference collections of Olin Library. This is not an exhaustive list of ways to find book reviews. Many disciplines have indexes that may be used to locate book reviews for that subject area (literature, history, religion, and so on). A few examples are listed here. Reference staff can guide you.
Book review indexes provide a citation to the review appearing in a newspaper, magazine, or journal. Search the newspaper, magazine, or journal title in the Cornell Library Catalog to find all the formats we own for that journal. Academic Search Premier , Amazon.com, ARBA online, Bowker's Books in Print , JSTOR , ProQuest Research Library , and ProQuest Historical Newspapers have the full text of at least some reviews (or online links to them).
For further information or to locate titles not listed here, consult a reference librarian .
The Difference between Book Reviews and Literary Criticism
The simplest criterion for distinguishing book reviews from literary criticism is the time of publication of the review/critical article compared to the original publication date of the book. Book reviews are written around the time the book was originally published; literary criticism appears in later years, usually about titles considered classics or in the literary canon.
For example, reviews of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby that appeared in 1925 or 1926 (right after the novel was published) are book reviews. Gatsby is considered an important work in the history of American literature, and literary criticism about the novel continues to be written today. MLA Bibliography is an important database to search for literary criticism.
In general, the sources cited in this guide find reviews that reflect the response near the time of a book's publication.
Reference Help
Permission to Use
If you wish to use or adapt any or all of the content of this Guide, please review our use permissions and Creative Commons license .
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- Plagiarism and grammar
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Cite a Book in MLA
Don't let plagiarism errors spoil your paper
Citing books in mla.
How do you cite a book? What information do you need to include and where does it go? Citation Machine citing tools can help you easily create formatted citations for your research paper.
First, find your book using the search box above. The book’s author, title, or ISBN will work. If there are books with similar titles, authors, different editions, etc., you will be shown all possibilities, so you can choose the correct book. From there, the citing tools will automatically pull information on the source and help you create a citation.
Books aren’t just in print. They can be electronic, too. You can find them in online databases, websites, audiobooks, and other forms of media. Citation Machine citing tools can handle those, as well.
Standard book citation:
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic, 2008.
Translated works in MLA format:
If the focus was on the text, rather than the actual translation, cite the source like this:
Vila-Matas, Enrique. Never Any End to Paris. Translated by Anne McLean, New Directions, 2011.
If the focus was on the translation, include the translator’s name first in the citation.
McLean, Anne, translator. Never Any End to Paris. By Enrique Vila-Matas, New Directions, 2011.
Wish you had an automatic MLA citation generator to do all of the heavy lifting for you? Try out our generator, at the top of this page.
How to cite a textbook in print:
To cite a full textbook in print in MLA format, you’ll need to find the following pieces of information:
- Name of the author(s) or editor(s)
- Title of the textbook, including any subtitles
- Version of the textbook (such as a numbered edition or revised edition)
- Name of the publisher
- Year the textbook was published
Place the pieces of information in this format:
Last name, First name of the author or Last name, First name, editor. Title of the Textbook. Version, Publisher, Year published.
If the textbook was compiled by an editor, use this format at the beginning of the citation:
Last name, First name, editor.
Examples of how to cite a textbook in print:
Lilly, Leonard S. Braunwald’s Heart Disease: Review and Assessment . 9th ed., Elsevier Saunders, 2012.
Cherny, Nathan, et al., editors. Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine . 5th ed., Oxford UP, 2015.
E-books in MLA format:
Citing an e-book (a digital book that lacks a URL and that you use software to read on a personal e-reader):
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. E-book ed., Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.
In the “version” section of the citation, include “E-book ed.” to specify that you used an e-book version of a printed book.
You can also use the “final supplemental” section of the citation to specify the file type of the electronic edition of the work if you know the work varies by file format.
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. E-book ed., Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. EPUB.
If you’re citing a book available from a website, here’s an example in MLA format:
Doyle, Arthur Conan. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Internet Archive, archive.org/details/deysayan844_gmail_Cano/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater&q=119.
The website is the container, which is found in the third position of the citation, in italics.
Wish you had a second set of eyes to review your citations? Use our MLA citation generator and compare the output to yours.
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MLA Style Handbook
Formatting your MLA Paper
What is MLA Style?
MLA (Modern Language Association) style for documentation is widely used in the humanities, especially in writing on language and literature. MLA style features brief parenthetical citations in the text keyed to an alphabetical list of works cited that appears at the end of the work. (Source: Official MLA website)
Core Elements
Each entry in the list of works cited is composed of facts common to most works—the MLA core elements. They are assembled in a specific order.
The concept of containers is crucial to MLA style. When the source being documented forms part of a larger whole, the larger whole can be thought of as a container that holds the source. For example, a short story may be contained in an anthology. The short story is the source, and the anthology is the container. (Source: MLA)
Examples of MLA Style
In-text Citation
In-text citations provide relevant source information, usually in parentheses, whenever a sentence includes a direct quotation or paraphrase. The source information provided can depend on the type of source you are citing but MUST directly correspond to the source information in your Works Cited page. Typically you will provide Author and Location in your in-text citation.
Creating a Works Cited Page
With MLA style, you must include a Works Cited page at the end of your paper. A Works Cited page is an alphabetical listing of the resources cited in your paper. Below are some examples of MLA style citations.
These are examples of MLA style, there are many factors to consider for each citation and other types of sources that aren't covered on this site. Please consult the Handbook or a librarian for more authoritative assistance with citations
Online MLA Citation Resources
- Official MLA Style Center The official website for MLA style, hosted by the Modern Language Association. The MLA Style Center does not contain the full text of the handbook, although it walks users through the process of creating an entry in the works cited list. It also has a robust Q&A section for user-submitted questions.
- Excelsior Writing Lab Citation examples, videos, and formatting guides for MLA style.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab Online writing lab with formatting tips and sample papers. The "Cite your source automatically" feature on Purdue Owl pages is part of another website, and not recommended.
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Critic’s Notebook
Like My Book Title? Thanks, I Borrowed It.
Literary allusions are everywhere. What are they good for?
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By A.O. Scott
You see it everywhere, even if you don’t always recognize it: the literary allusion. Quick! Which two big novels of the past two years borrowed their titles from “Macbeth”? Nailing the answer — “ Birnam Wood ” and “ Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow ” — might make you feel a little smug.
Perhaps the frisson of cleverness ( I know where that’s from!), or the flip-side cringe of ignorance ( I should know where that’s from! ), is enough to spur you to buy a book, the way a search-optimized headline compels you to click a link. After all, titles are especially fertile ground for allusion-mongering. The name of a book becomes more memorable when it echoes something you might have heard — or think you should have heard — before.
This kind of appropriation seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Before the turn of the 20th century, titles were more descriptive than allusive. The books themselves may have been stuffed with learning, but the words on the covers were largely content to give the prospective reader the who (“Pamela,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Frankenstein”), where (“Wuthering Heights,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Treasure Island”) or what (“The Scarlet Letter,” “War and Peace,” “The Way We Live Now”) of the book.
Somehow, by the middle of the 20th century, literature had become an echo chamber. Look homeward, angel! Ask not for whom the sound and the fury slouches toward Bethlehem in dubious battle. When Marcel Proust was first translated into English, he was made to quote Shakespeare, and “In Search of Lost Time” (the literal, plainly descriptive French title) became “Remembrance of Things Past,” a line from Sonnet 30 .
Recent Proust translators have erased the Shakespearean reference in fidelity to the original, but the habit of dressing up new books in secondhand clothing persists, in fiction and nonfiction alike. Last year, in addition to “Birnam Wood,” there were Jonathan Rosen’s “ The Best Minds ,” with its whisper of Allen Ginsberg’s “ Howl ,” Paul Harding’s “ This Other Eden ” (“ Richard II ”), and William Egginton’s “ The Rigor of Angels ” (Borges). The best-seller lists and publishers’ catalogs contain multitudes ( Walt Whitman ). Here comes everybody! (James Joyce).
If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own. I didn’t say that: Morrissey did, in a deepish Smiths cut (“ Cemetry Gates , ” from 1986), which misquotes Shakespeare and name-checks John Keats, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde — possibly the most reliably recycled writers (along with John Milton and the authors of the King James Bible) in the English language.
Not that any of them would have minded. When Keats wrote that “ a thing of beauty is a joy forever ,” he surely hoped that at least that much of “ Endymion ” would outlive him. It’s a beautiful sentiment! And he may have been right. Does anyone read his four-part, 4,000-line elegy for Thomas Chatterton outside a college English class, or even for that matter inside one? Nonetheless, that opening line may ring a bell if you remember it from the movies “ Mary Poppins ,” “Yellow Submarine” or “ White Men Can’t Jump .”
Wilde’s witticism and bons mots have survived even as some of his longer works have languished. If it’s true (as he said) that only superficial people do not judge by appearances, maybe it follows that shallow gleaning is the deepest kind of reading. Or maybe, to paraphrase Yeats, devoted readers of poetry lack all conviction , while reckless quoters are full of passionate intensity .
Like everything else, this is the fault of the internet, which has cannibalized our reading time while offering facile, often spurious, pseudo-erudition to anyone with the wit to conduct a search. As Mark Twain once said to Winston Churchill, if you Google, you don’t have to remember anything.
Seriously though: I come not to bury the practice of allusion, but to praise it. (“ Julius Caesar ”) And also to ask, in all earnestness and with due credit to Edwin Starr , “ Seinfeld” and Leo Tolstoy : What is it good for?
The language centers of our brains are dynamos of originality. A competent speaker of any language is capable of generating intelligible, coherent sentences that nobody has uttered before. That central insight of modern linguistics, advanced by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s and ’60s, is wonderfully democratic. Every one of us is a poet in our daily speech, an inglorious Milton ( Thomas Gray ), a Shakespeare minting new coins of eloquence.
Of course, actual poets are congenital thieves (as T.S. Eliot or someone like him may have said), plucking words and phrases from the pages of their peers and precursors. The rest of us are poets in that sense, too. If our brains are foundries, they are also warehouses, crammed full of clichés, advertising slogans, movie catchphrases, song lyrics, garbled proverbs and jokes we heard on the playground at recess in third grade. Also great works of literature.
There are those who sift through this profusion with the fanatical care of mushroom hunters, collecting only the most palatable and succulent specimens. Others crash through the thickets, words latching onto us like burrs on a sweater. If we tried to remove them, the whole garment — our consciousness, in this unruly metaphor — might come unraveled.
That may also be true collectively. If we were somehow able to purge our language of its hand-me-down elements, we might lose language itself. What happens if nobody reads anymore, or if everyone reads different things? Does the practice of literary quotation depend on a stable set of common references? Or does it function as a kind of substitute for a shared body of knowledge that may never have existed at all?
The old literary canon — that dead white men’s club of star-bellied sneetches ( Dr. Seuss ) — may have lost some of its luster in recent decades, but it has shown impressive staying power as a cornucopia of quotes. Not the only one, by any means (or memes). Television, popular music, advertising and social media all provide abundant fodder, and the way we read now (or don’t) has a way of rendering it all equivalent. The soul selects her own society ( Emily Dickinson ).
When I was young, my parents had a fat anthology of mid-20th-century New Yorker cartoons , a book I pored over with obsessive zeal. One drawing that baffled me enough to stick in my head featured a caption with the following words: “It’s quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles.” What on earth was that? It wasn’t until I was in graduate school, cramming for an oral exam in Renaissance literature, that I found the answer in “ L’Allegro, ” an early poem by Milton, more often quoted as the author of “Paradise Lost.”
Not that having the citation necessarily helps. The cartoon, by George Booth, depicts a woman in her living room, addressing members of a multigenerational, multispecies household. There are cats, codgers, a child with a yo-yo, a bird in a cage and a dog chained to the sofa. Through the front window, the family patriarch can be seen coming up the walk, a fedora on his head and a briefcase in his right hand. His arrival — “Here comes Poppa” — is the occasion for the woman’s Miltonic pep talk.
Who is she? Why is she quoting “L’Allegro”? Part of the charm, I now suspect, lies in the absurdity of those questions. But I also find myself wondering: Were New Yorker readers in the early 1970s, when the cartoon was first published, expected to get the allusion right off the bat? They couldn’t Google it. Or would they have laughed at the incongruous eruption of an old piece of poetry they couldn’t quite place?
Maybe what’s funny is that most people wouldn’t know what that lady was talking about. And maybe the same comic conceit animates an earlier James Thurber drawing reprinted in the same book. In this one, a wild-eyed woman bursts into a room, wearing a floppy hat and wielding a basket of meadow flowers. “I come from haunts of coot and hern!” she exclaims to the baffled company, disturbing their cocktail party.
That’s it. That’s the gag.
Were readers also baffled? It turns out that Thurber’s would-be nature goddess is quoting “ The Brook ,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (I’ve never read it either.) Is it necessary to get the reference to get the joke? If you chuckle in recognition, and complete the stanza without missing a beat — “I make a sudden sally/And sparkle out among the fern,/To bicker down a valley” — is the joke on you?
It’s possible, from the standpoint of the present, to assimilate these old pictures to the familiar story about the decline of a civilization based in part on common cultural knowledge. Sure. Whatever. Things fall apart ( Yeats ). In the cartoons’ own terms, though, spouting snippets of poetry is an unmistakable sign of eccentricity — the pastime of kooky women and the male illustrators who commit them to paper. This is less a civilization than a sodality of weirdos, a visionary company ( Hart Crane ) of misfits. But don’t quote me on that.
A.O. Scott is a critic at large for The Times’s Book Review, writing about literature and ideas. He joined The Times in 2000 and was a film critic until early 2023. More about A.O. Scott
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MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications)
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MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
The MLA Handbook highlights principles over prescriptive practices. Essentially, a writer will need to take note of primary elements in every source, such as author, title, etc. and then assort them in a general format. Thus, by using this methodology, a writer will be able to cite any source regardless of whether it’s included in this list.
However, this guide will highlight a few concerns when citing digital sources in MLA style.
Best Practices for Managing Online Sources
Because online information can change or disappear, it is always a good idea to keep personal copies of important electronic information whenever possible. Downloading or even printing key documents ensures you have a stable backup. You can also use the Bookmark function in your web browser in order to build an easy-to-access reference for all of your project's sources (though this will not help you if the information is changed or deleted).
It is also wise to keep a record of when you first consult with each online source. MLA uses the phrase, “Accessed” to denote which date you accessed the web page when available or necessary. It is not required to do so, but it is encouraged (especially when there is no copyright date listed on a website).
Important Note on the Use of URLs in MLA
Include a URL or web address to help readers locate your sources. Because web addresses are not static (i.e., they change often) and because documents sometimes appear in multiple places on the web (e.g., on multiple databases), MLA encourages the use of citing containers such as Youtube, JSTOR, Spotify, or Netflix in order to easily access and verify sources. However, MLA only requires the www. address, so eliminate all https:// when citing URLs.
Many scholarly journal articles found in databases include a DOI (digital object identifier). If a DOI is available, cite the DOI number instead of the URL.
Online newspapers and magazines sometimes include a “permalink,” which is a shortened, stable version of a URL. Look for a “share” or “cite this” button to see if a source includes a permalink. If you can find a permalink, use that instead of a URL.
Abbreviations Commonly Used with Electronic Sources
If page numbers are not available, use par. or pars. to denote paragraph numbers. Use these in place of the p. or pp. abbreviation. Par. would be used for a single paragraph, while pars. would be used for a span of two or more paragraphs.
Basic Style for Citations of Electronic Sources (Including Online Databases)
Here are some common features you should try to find before citing electronic sources in MLA style. Not every web page will provide all of the following information. However, collect as much of the following information as possible:
- Author and/or editor names (if available); last names first.
- "Article name in quotation marks."
- Title of the website, project, or book in italics.
- Any version numbers available, including editions (ed.), revisions, posting dates, volumes (vol.), or issue numbers (no.).
- Publisher information, including the publisher name and publishing date.
- Take note of any page numbers (p. or pp.) or paragraph numbers (par. or pars.).
- DOI (if available, precede it with "https://doi.org/"), otherwise a URL (without the https://) or permalink.
- Date you accessed the material (Date Accessed). While not required, saving this information it is highly recommended, especially when dealing with pages that change frequently or do not have a visible copyright date.
Use the following format:
Author. "Title." Title of container (self contained if book) , Other contributors (translators or editors), Version (edition), Number (vol. and/or no.), Publisher, Publication Date, Location (pages, paragraphs and/or URL, DOI or permalink). 2 nd container’s title , Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location, Date of Access (if applicable).
Citing an Entire Web Site
When citing an entire website, follow the same format as listed above, but include a compiler name if no single author is available.
Author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site. Version number (if available), Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), DOI (preferred), otherwise include a URL or permalink. Date of access (if applicable).
Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site . Version number, Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), URL, DOI or permalink. Date of access (if applicable).
The Purdue OWL Family of Sites . The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl. Accessed 23 Apr. 2008.
Felluga, Dino. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory . Purdue U, 28 Nov. 2003, www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/. Accessed 10 May 2006.
Course or Department Websites
Give the instructor name. Then list the title of the course (or the school catalog designation for the course) in italics. Give appropriate department and school names as well, following the course title.
Felluga, Dino. Survey of the Literature of England . Purdue U, Aug. 2006, web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/241/241/Home.html. Accessed 31 May 2007.
English Department . Purdue U, 20 Apr. 2009, www.cla.purdue.edu/english/. Accessed 31 May 2015.
A Page on a Web Site
For an individual page on a Web site, list the author or alias if known, followed by an indication of the specific page or article being referenced. Usually, the title of the page or article appears in a header at the top of the page. Follow this with the information covered above for entire Web sites. If the publisher is the same as the website name, only list it once.
Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow , www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html. Accessed 6 July 2015.
“ Athlete's Foot - Topic Overview. ” WebMD , 25 Sept. 2014, www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/tc/athletes-foot-topic-overview.
Citations for e-books closely resemble those for physical books. Simply indicate that the book in question is an e-book by putting the term "e-book" in the "version" slot of the MLA template (i.e., after the author, the title of the source, the title of the container, and the names of any other contributors).
Silva, Paul J. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. E-book, American Psychological Association, 2007.
If the e-book is formatted for a specific reader device or service, you can indicate this by treating this information the same way you would treat a physical book's edition number. Often, this will mean replacing "e-book" with "[App/Service] ed."
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince , translated by W. K. Marriott, Kindle ed., Library of Alexandria, 2018.
Note: The MLA considers the term "e-book" to refer to publications formatted specifically for reading with an e-book reader device (e.g., a Kindle) or a corresponding web application. These e-books will not have URLs or DOIs. If you are citing book content from an ordinary webpage with a URL, use the "A Page on a Web Site" format above.
An Image (Including a Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph)
Provide the artist's name, the work of art italicized, the date of creation, the institution and city where the work is housed. Follow this initial entry with the name of the Website in italics, and the date of access.
Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV . 1800. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Museo Nacional del Prado , www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-family-of-carlos-iv/f47898fc-aa1c-48f6-a779-71759e417e74. Accessed 22 May 2006.
Klee, Paul. Twittering Machine . 1922. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Artchive , www.artchive.com/artchive/K/klee/twittering_machine.jpg.html. Accessed May 2006.
If the work cited is available on the web only, then provide the name of the artist, the title of the work, and then follow the citation format for a website. If the work is posted via a username, use that username for the author.
Adams, Clifton R. “People Relax Beside a Swimming Pool at a Country Estate Near Phoenix, Arizona, 1928.” Found, National Geographic Creative, 2 June 2016, natgeofound.tumblr.com/.
An Article in a Web Magazine
Provide the author name, article name in quotation marks, title of the web magazine in italics, publisher name, publication date, URL, and the date of access.
Bernstein, Mark. “ 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web. ” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites , 16 Aug. 2002, alistapart.com/article/writeliving. Accessed 4 May 2009.
An Article in an Online Scholarly Journal
For all online scholarly journals, provide the author(s) name(s), the name of the article in quotation marks, the title of the publication in italics, all volume and issue numbers, and the year of publication. Include a DOI if available, otherwise provide a URL or permalink to help readers locate the source.
Article in an Online-only Scholarly Journal
MLA requires a page range for articles that appear in Scholarly Journals. If the journal you are citing appears exclusively in an online format (i.e. there is no corresponding print publication) that does not make use of page numbers, indicate the URL or other location information.
Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/60/362. Accessed 20 May 2009.
Article in an Online Scholarly Journal That Also Appears in Print
Cite articles in online scholarly journals that also appear in print as you would a scholarly journal in print, including the page range of the article . Provide the URL and the date of access.
Wheelis, Mark. “ Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. ” Emerging Infectious Diseases , vol. 6, no. 6, 2000, pp. 595-600, wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/6/00-0607_article. Accessed 8 Feb. 2009.
An Article from an Online Database (or Other Electronic Subscription Service)
Cite online databases (e.g. LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, ScienceDirect) and other subscription services as containers. Thus, provide the title of the database italicized before the DOI or URL. If a DOI is not provided, use the URL instead. Provide the date of access if you wish.
Alonso, Alvaro, and Julio A. Camargo. “ Toxicity of Nitrite to Three Species of Freshwater Invertebrates. ” Environmental Toxicology, vol. 21, no. 1, 3 Feb. 2006, pp. 90-94. Wiley Online Library , https://doi.org/10.1002/tox.20155. Accessed 26 May 2009.
Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, 2007, pp. 173-96. ProQuest , https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X06005966. Accessed 27 May 2009.
E-mail (including E-mail Interviews)
Give the author of the message, followed by the subject line in quotation marks. State to whom the message was sent with the phrase, “Received by” and the recipient’s name. Include the date the message was sent. Use standard capitalization.
Kunka, Andrew. “ Re: Modernist Literature. ” Received by John Watts, 15 Nov. 2000.
Neyhart, David. “ Re: Online Tutoring. ” Received by Joe Barbato, 1 Dec. 2016.
A Listserv, Discussion Group, or Blog Posting
Cite web postings as you would a standard web entry. Provide the author of the work, the title of the posting in quotation marks, the web site name in italics, the publisher, and the posting date. Follow with the date of access. Include screen names as author names when author name is not known. If both names are known, place the author’s name in brackets.
Author or compiler name (if available). “Posting Title.” Name of Site , Version number (if available), Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), URL. Date of access.
Salmar1515 [Sal Hernandez]. “Re: Best Strategy: Fenced Pastures vs. Max Number of Rooms?” BoardGameGeek , 29 Sept. 2008, boardgamegeek.com/thread/343929/best-strategy-fenced-pastures-vs-max-number-rooms. Accessed 5 Apr. 2009.
Begin with the user's Twitter handle in place of the author’s name. Next, place the tweet in its entirety in quotations, inserting a period after the tweet within the quotations. Include the date and time of posting, using the reader's time zone; separate the date and time with a comma and end with a period. Include the date accessed if you deem necessary.
@tombrokaw. “ SC demonstrated why all the debates are the engines of this campaign. ” Twitter, 22 Jan. 2012, 3:06 a.m., twitter.com/tombrokaw/status/160996868971704320.
@PurdueWLab. “ Spring break is around the corner, and all our locations will be open next week. ” Twitter , 5 Mar. 2012, 12:58 p.m., twitter.com/PurdueWLab/status/176728308736737282.
A YouTube Video
Video and audio sources need to be documented using the same basic guidelines for citing print sources in MLA style. Include as much descriptive information as necessary to help readers understand the type and nature of the source you are citing. If the author’s name is the same as the uploader, only cite the author once. If the author is different from the uploader, cite the author’s name before the title.
McGonigal, Jane. “Gaming and Productivity.” YouTube , uploaded by Big Think, 3 July 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdzy9bWW3E.
“8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test.” YouTube, uploaded by Crazy Russian Hacker, 6 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBlpjSEtELs.
A Comment on a Website or Article
List the username as the author. Use the phrase, Comment on, before the title. Use quotation marks around the article title. Name the publisher, date, time (listed on near the comment), and the URL.
Not Omniscient Enough. Comment on “ Flight Attendant Tells Passenger to ‘Shut Up’ After Argument Over Pasta. ” ABC News, 9 Jun 2016, 4:00 p.m., abcnews.go.com/US/flight-attendant-tells-passenger-shut-argument-pasta/story?id=39704050.
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Note: If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source after the name of the book's author.
Proceed title with the words Review of and follow rules of capitalization stated above. Italicize title. Separate from author with a comma. Author of book: by Vendela Vida. Precede name with the word 'by,' then first name and last. End with a period. Title & subtitle of the periodical the review appears in: The New York Times Book Review ...
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal, vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp.First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database. doi: DOI Number if Given.. Note: If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal, vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp.First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database. doi: DOI Number if Given.. Note: If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
E-books and online books. The citation format for an e-book depends on how you accessed it. Books accessed online. If you accessed the book via a website or database, use the standard MLA book citation format, followed by the name of the website or database and a link to the book. Look for a DOI, stable URL or permalink.
The examples on this page are for book reviews published in academic journals and found through library databases. If the book review is from a different type of source, such as a newspaper or a website, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Review." Name of Journal, vol. Volume Number, no. Issue Number, Date of Publication, pp.First Page Number-Last Page Number. Name of Database. doi: DOI Number if Given.. Note: If the book review is from a source other than an article in the library's database, view the appropriate section on the MLA guide to determine how to cite the source.
Book Review - Examples. In-Text: (Powers 10) Works Cited: Powers, Thomas. "The Road to West Egg." Review of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, by Sarah Churchwell, London Review of Books, 4 July 2013, pp. 9-11. NOTE: If a review is untitled, include a title which incorporates the work that is being reviewed:
Elements: Reviewer. Review of Title of Work, by Author.; Title of Journal,; Volume number, issue number, Publication Date, Page number(s). Title of Database,; DOI or ...
In-Text Citation Example: (Author's Last Name and Author's Last Name Page Number) Example: (Jacobson and Kysar 25) Three or More Authors. Last Name, First Name of First Author, et al. Title of Book: Subtitle if Any. Edition if given and is not first edition, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication.
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
How to Cite a Book. To create a basic works-cited-list entry for a book, list the author, the title, the publisher, and the publication date. You may need to include other elements depending on the type of book you are citing (e.g., an edited book, a translation) and how it is published (e.g., in print, as an e-book, online).
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
Cite your book. *Keep "https:" at the beginning of the URL only when citing a DOI. Digital sources with no page numbers means that no page numbers should be included in the in-text citation. In-text Citation. Structure. (Last Names) OR Last Names. Example. (Austen and Grahame-Smith) OR Austen and Grahame-Smith.
Adhere to a particular citation style, such as Chicago, MLA, or APA. Put your name at the very end of the book review text. The basic purpose of a book review is to convey and evaluate the following: a. what the book is about; b. the expertise of the author(s); c. how well the book covers its topic(s) and whether it breaks new ground; d.
MLA Citation Generator >. Cite a Review. Citation Machine® helps students and professionals properly credit the information that they use. Cite sources in APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and Harvard for free.
A Review. To cite a review, include the title of the review (if available), then the phrase, "Review of" and provide the title of the work (in italics for books, plays, and films; in quotation marks for articles, poems, and short stories). Finally, provide performance and/or publication information.
Book review indexes provide a citation to the review appearing in a newspaper, magazine, or journal. ... MLA Bibliography is an important database to search for literary criticism. In general, the sources cited in this guide find reviews that reflect the response near the time of a book's publication.
E-books in MLA format: Citing an e-book (a digital book that lacks a URL and that you use software to read on a personal e-reader): Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. E-book ed., Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. In the "version" section of the citation, include "E-book ed." to specify that you used an e-book version of a printed book.
Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation MLA documentation and formatting style is often used in the humanities (except history and theology) and the fine arts. This handout provides some of the key rules, but for additional help, use the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (9th edition), visit the Purdue OWL
In-text citations: Author-page style. MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number (s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the ...
Book or ebook For an ebook a DOI or permalink would be added to the end of your citation. Coward, David. A History of French Literature: From Chanson de geste to Cinema. London: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Book or ebook chapter. A chapter from a print book would not include a DOI or permalink. Hayden, Erica Rhodes.
A.O. Scott is a critic at large for The Times's Book Review, writing about literature and ideas. He joined The Times in 2000 and was a film critic until early 2023. He joined The Times in 2000 ...
An E-Book. Citations for e-books closely resemble those for physical books. Simply indicate that the book in question is an e-book by putting the term "e-book" in the "version" slot of the MLA template (i.e., after the author, the title of the source, the title of the container, and the names of any other contributors).