Research Guides: College Writing: Official Guide: Citing Sources

MLA (Modern Language Association) Style

Developed by the Modern Language Association, this style is widely used in literary studies and throughout the humanities. Unlike Chicago humanities style, it uses in-text citations rather than notes.

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.

Want to know more about the new edition of the MLA? Check out MLA 8th edition: What's New and Different from the Purdue OWL!

MLA handbook
8th ed. 2016

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The Modern Language Association, the authority on research and writing, takes a fresh look at documenting sources in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. Works are published today in a dizzying range of formats. A book, for example, may be read in print, online, or as an e-book–or perhaps listened to in an audio version. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. Previous editions of the MLA Handbook provided separate instructions for each format, and new formats required additional instructions. In this groundbreaking new edition of its best-selling handbook, the MLA recommends instead one universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any source
MLA Formatting and Style Guide
From the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
MLA Practice Template
From MLA Handbook (8th ed.), published by the Modern Language Association (style.mla.org).
MLA Style Center
Works Cited: A Quick Guide
Google Scholar
The Cite link in search results gives MLA, APA, and Chicago style references. More inf.

Using Zotero a Citation Management System

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.

Take a look at what you can do with Zotero:

Create and manage citations of books, articles, videos, etc.
Import citations from databases and the WU Catalog
Add searchable notes and tags to citations; attach pdf's if desired
Quickly create a bibliography in multiple formats (MLA, Chicago, APA...)
Automatically manage in-text citations in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice/OpenOffice
Easily share references with others

Go to the Library's Zotero Guide to learn more: http://libguides.wustl.edu/zotero