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MLA Citation Guide (MLA 8th Edition): Works Cited List & Sample Paper

Please use this LibGuide for quick reference help regarding the Modern Language Associations (MLA) citation format. Content courtesy of Seneca University Libraries: http://seneca.libguides.com/mla.

Please Note: all links on this page will take you to Seneca College Libraries LibGuide pages. All content in this guide is courtesy of Seneca College Libraries. This guide is used/adapted with the permission of Seneca College Libraries. For information please contact lcc@senecacollege.ca.

Sample Paper w/ Works Cited page

Sample MLA paper, including Works Cited page (via Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab: MLA Style Guide)

This sample paper can be used as a template to set up your assignment and your Works Cited page in MLA format.

Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab (logo)

End-of-Paper Checklist

Finished your assignment? Use this checklist to be sure you haven't missed any information needed for MLA style.

Quick Rules for an MLA Works Cited page

Your research paper ends with a list of all the sources cited in the text of the paper. This is called a Works Cited page.

Here are eight quick rules for this list:

  1. Start a new page for your Works Cited list (e.g., if your paper is 4 pages long, start your Works Cited list on page 5).
  2. Center the title, Works Cited, at the top of the page and do not bold or underline it.
  3. Double-space the list.
  4. Start the first line of each citation at the left margin. For every line after the first line, use a "hanging indent". Instructions for setting up a hanging indent in Word can be found here. 
  5. Put your list in alphabetical order. Alphabetize the list by the first word in the citation. In most cases, the first word will be the author’s last name. Where the author is unknown, alphabetize by the first word in the title, ignoring the following words: a, an, the.
  6. For each author, give the last name followed by a comma and the first name followed by a period.
  7. Italicize the titles of full works: books, journal titles, audiovisual material, websites.
  8. Do not italicize titles of parts of works, such as: articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals / essays, poems, short stories or chapter titles from a book / chapters or sections of an Internet document. Instead, use quotation marks.