MLA Referencing – Key Facts

Referencing sources is clearly a vital part of academic writing, and a skill every student needs to develop. However, with the wide range of referencing systems available, it’s easy to get confused about which approach to use in your work.

To help out, we’re looking at how the MLA referencing system works.

MLA Referencing: An Overview

Developed by the Modern Language Association, MLA Style is used by a large number of higher education institutions and scholarly journals, particularly in the human sciences.

MLA referencing is the aspect of MLA Style dedicated to citing sources, providing a quick way of showing your reader how you’ve engaged with past research.

In-Text Citations

MLA uses parenthetical citations, so basic source details are given in the main body of your work, with full information provided in a ‘Works Cited’ list at the end of your document.

MLA citations are actually simpler than some systems. This is because they only require giving the author’s last name and a relevant page number:

The ancestors of modern crows ‘probably originated in Australia’ (Sax 9).

If the author is named in the text, you only need to cite page numbers:

According to Sax, farmers often viewed crows ‘with hatred’ (131).

If you’re citing more than one source by the same author, however, use a shortened version of the title instead to avoid confusion:

Many crows ‘form large assemblies in late autumn or summer’ (Crow 25).

When to Cite Sources

MLA referencing requires you to cite sources when quoting or paraphrasing a source you depend on in your work. Always provide page/section numbers if available.

However, you don’t always need to cite a source for common knowledge (e.g. ‘Paris is in France’) or for other information which you’re certain your readers will be familiar with.

Works Cited

All the sources you cite should also appear on a ‘Works Cited’ page at the end of your document, with full publication information provided for your reader. In accordance with the updated eighth edition of the MLA Handbook, this requires:

• Starting on a new page headed ‘Works Cited’
• Listing all cited sources alphabetically by author surname
• Capitalising important words in the titles of articles and books; do not capitalise conjunctions and articles unless they are the first word of a title or subtitle
• Using italics for titles of longer works (e.g. books, magazines) and quotation marks for titles of shorter works (e.g. poems, articles, etc.)
• Using a hanging indent for each line after the first in each entry

The exact information required for a source in the ‘Works Cited’ list will depend on its format. Typically, though, it should include the author’s name, a title and publication information. For instance, the book cited above would appear as:

Sax, Boria. Crow. Reaktion Books Ltd, 2003.