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MLA Citation Style Guide: Home

The MLA Citation Style Guide provides assistance for citing sources, based on the guidelines set by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition.

MLA 9th Edition notes

The 9th edition of the MLA Handbook continues the method for creating bibliographic entries set out in the eighth edition, which focused on the principles of documenting sources, rather than on strict adherence to a particular format for each source. Below are two examples of popular bibliographic entries. 

Citing a print book with one author:

Jacobs, Alan. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Oxford UP, 2011.

In this version, only the most essential information is included (author’s name, book title, publisher, and date). 

Citing an article from a scholarly journal:

Kincaid, Jamaica. “In History.” Callaloo, vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 2001, pp. 620-26.

This version identifies the volume (24), the number (2), and the page numbers (620-26) of the scholarly journal, rather than leaving those numbers without clear explanation. This helps readers best make sense of your citation and allows them to locate your source without getting bogged down with extra information or references that can be difficult to decipher. Also note that punctuation is simple; only commas separate the journal title, volume, number, date, and page numbers.

 

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MLA Handbook 9th Edition

New Citation Notes: Chat GPT and other AI Tools

From the MLA Style Center:

You should:

  • cite a generative AI tool whenever you paraphrase, quote, or incorporate into your own work any content (whether text, image, data, or other) that was created by it 
  • acknowledge all functional uses of the tool (like editing your prose or translating words) in a note, your text, or another suitable location 
  • take care to vet the secondary sources it cites

Description of what was generated by the AI tool. Name of AI Tool, version, Publisher, Date generated, URL of the tool.

Example:

In text:

While the green light in The Great Gatsby might be said to chiefly symbolize four main things: optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness (“Describe the symbolism”), arguably the most important—the one that ties all four themes together—is greed.

Works Cited:

“Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.