Access Date
Works from the web can typically be changed or removed at any time, so while it's optional, the date which you accessed material is often important. This is especially true when there is no date specifying when an item was produced.This date will be added to the end of the entry. E.g. Accessed 23 July 2016.
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.
Dates
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.
Publishers
You have the option to use the shortened name of the publisher by using UP instead of University 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).
Titles
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).
Layout of potential core elements.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Supplemental Elements. Title of 1st Container, Contributor, Version or edition, Number, Publisher Name, Publication Date, Pages. Title of 2nd Container, Contributor, Version or edition, Number, Publisher Name, Publication Date, Pages. Supplemental Elements.
NOTE: You do NOT need to use all of these elements for every source. Use the ones that are relevant to your source.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Contributors, edition, shortened Publisher Name, Year of publication.
Additional information and elements may be added to clarify details, such as original publication data, type of contribution, and online location.
The order of elements can change due to many factors:
Print books are the basic format for ciations. Add contributors and other publication data as needed.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Contributors, Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication.
Berlatsky, Noah. Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948. Rutgers UP, 2017.
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. 7th ed, McGraw Hill, 2014.
Damrosch, David, et al., editors. The Longman Anthology of World Literature, 2nd ed., vol. A, Pearson Education, 2009.
Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I'm Dying. Knopf, 2007.
DiYanni, Robert, editor. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2007.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith, 1st American ed., Pantheon Books, 1972.
Holbein, Hans, et al. The Dance of Death. 1538. Dover Publications, 1971. Facsimile.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Translated by Stanley Corngold, 2013 ed., Modern Library, 1915.
McKee, Timothy, and James A. McKee. Business Ethics: The Political Basis of Commerce. Oxford UP, 2009.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. Unabridged version, F. M. Lupton, 1877.
Strunk, William, Jr., and EB White. The Elements of Style. Illustrated by Maira Kalman, Penguin Press, 2005.
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 3rd edition, Oxford UP, 2018.
Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. Sage, 2005.
Zeigler-Hill, Virgil, and David K. Marcus, editors. The Dark Side of Personality: Science and Practice in Social, Personality, and Clinical Psychology. American Psychological Association, 2016.
Include the same information as the print copy. Then add the name of the web site or platform and the ebook's URL.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication. Name of Library Database, DOI or URL. Accessed Date.
Abbott, Stacey. Celluloid Vampires: Life After Death in the Modern World. University of Texas Press, 2007. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.7560/716957. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023.
Bellantoni, Patti. If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling. Taylor and Francis, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/otis-ebooks/detail.action?docID=234952.
Hashim, Ahmed S. "The Potential for Nuclear Proliferation Creates Tension." The Middle East, edited by Mary E. Williams, Greenhaven Press, 2000. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010229212/OVIC?u=los12365&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=4991e18d. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023. Originally published as "Nuclear Fears and Phantoms," Middle East Insight, 1998.
Norris, Robin, et al., editors. Feminist Approaches to Early Medieval English Studies. Amsterdam University Press, 2023. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=3464493&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Peabody, Rebecca, et al., editors. Visualizing Empire: Africa, Europe, and the Politics of Representation. Getty Publications, 2021. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/82028.
Vogt, W. Paul, et al. When to Use What Research Design. Guilford Publications, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/otis-ebooks/detail.action?docID=873354.
Sometimes a library database may post selected chapters or selections from e-book.
Hashim, Ahmed S. "The Potential for Nuclear Proliferation Creates Tension." The Middle East, edited by Mary E. Williams, Greenhaven Press, 2000. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010229212/OVIC?u=los12365&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=4991e18d. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023. Originally published as "Nuclear Fears and Phantoms," Middle East Insight, 1998.
Include the same information as the print copy. Then add the name of the database or platform and the ebook's URL.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication. Website Name, DOI or URL. Accessed Date.
Henty, George Alfred. The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt. Illustrated by J.R. Weguelin. Blackie and Son, 1889. HathiTrust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015073478847. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017.
Kavanagh, Jennifer and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. RAND Corporation, 2018. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2023.
Include the same information as the print copy. Include the e-book version or file format in the Edition statement.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, E-book ed. OR File Format OR App Name, Publisher Name, Year of publication.
MLA Handbook. 9th ed., e-book, Modern Language Association of America, 2021.
MLA Handbook. 9th ed., EPUB file, Modern Language Association of America, 2021.
MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Kindle ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. 1883. Illustrated by Milo Winter, iBook ed., Children's Classics, 1986.
Use this when you are citing an entire work. See below for citing selections from these types of works.
Author's Last Name, First Name, editor. Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication.
If there is no editor given you may leave out that part of the citation.
Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, editors. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing, 2014.
DiYanni, Robert, editor. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2007.
Zeigler-Hill, Virgil, and David K. Marcus, editors. The Dark Side of Personality: Science and Practice in Social, Personality, and Clinical Psychology. American Psychological Association, 2016.
Mostly applies to chapters, essays, and articles in collections or anthologies. These larger works usually have editors; that is, they were written by multiple people.
This can also apply to a collection of works by a single author, when there are different people involved in each selection, such as editors, illustrators, and translators.
Start with the author(s) of the selection--such as chapter, essay, poem, short story, article--followed by the title of the selection in quotes. Then add in the information for the larger work. At the end, include the page numbers of the selection.
If a generic part of a book--e.g. introduction, preface, foreward, afterward, and acknowledgments--has a unique title that does not identify it as such, you may add that generic label as a Supplemental Element. Include this label only when you want to highlight or emphasize its role in the book.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Short Story, Essay, or Article." Title of Book: Subtitle, edited by Editor's First Name and Last Name, Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication, pp. ##-##.
Foucault, Michel. "The Functions of Literature." Translated by Alan Sheridan. Politics, Philosophy, Culture : Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. Routledge, 1988, pp. 307-313.
Hashim, Ahmed S. "The Potential for Nuclear Proliferation Creates Tension." The Middle East, edited by Mary E. Williams, Greenhaven Press, 2000. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010229212/OVIC?u=los12365&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=4991e18d. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023. Originally published as "Nuclear Fears and Phantoms," Middle East Insight, 1998.
Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Avoiding Sentence Fragments.” Writing Matters: A Handbook for Writing and Research, 2nd ed., McGraw Hill, 2014, pp. 600-10.
Kritzman, Lawrence D. "Foucault and the Politics of Experience." Introduction. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. Routledge, 1988, pp. ix-xxv.
Mulvey, Laura. From "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 2nd ed., Blackwell Publishing, 2014, pp. 982-989.
Hashim, Ahmed S. "The Potential for Nuclear Proliferation Creates Tension." The Middle East, edited by Mary E. Williams, Greenhaven Press, 2000. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010229212/OVIC?u=los12365&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=4991e18d. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023. Originally published as "Nuclear Fears and Phantoms," Middle East Insight, 1998.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat". Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, edited by Robert DiYanni, 6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2007, pp. 137-43.
Tynan, Kenneth. "The Kansas Farm Murders." The Critical Response to Truman Capote, edited by Joseph J. Waldmeir and John C. Waldmeir, Greenwood Press, 1999, pp. 129-34.
Skip the author and use the title. Don't include initial articles like "A", "An" or "The".
Exception: If the aurhot on the title page is listed as "Anonymous", then you may list is as the author.
Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher Name, Year of Publication.
Beowulf. Lerner Publishing Group, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/otis-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5441766.
Anonymous [Joe Klein]. Primary Colors: a novel of politics. Random House, 1996.
Instead of repeating the same information, start with the title and treat the author as the Publisher. .
Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Group or Corporate Author Name, Year of Publication.
Bait and Switch Selling. Competition Bureau of Canada, 2014. Pamphlet.
MLA Handbook. 8th ed., e-book, Modern Language Association of America, 2016.
Use the group name as the Author.
Group or Corporate Author. Title of Book: Subtitle. Edition, Publisher Name, Year of Publication.
Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. Employability Skills: Creating My Future, Nelson, 1996.
If the translator is responsible for the entire book (or container), treat them as a Contributor.
Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Translated by Name, Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith, 1st American ed., Pantheon Books, 1972.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Translated by Stanley Corngold, 2013 ed., Modern Library, 1915.
If the translator is only responsible for translating a portion of a book--such as a chapter, essay, or poem--treat them as Additional Elements. Also include the page range after the year of publication.
Author's Last Name, First Name. "Selection Title." Translated by Name. Title of Book: Subtitle. Editors, Edition, Publisher Name, Year of publication, pp. ##-##.
Foucault, Michel. "The Functions of Literature." Translated by Alan Sheridan. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. Routledge, 1988, pp. 307-313.
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