MLA Citation Guide

Author-Page Style: The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence.
Example A:
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
Example B:
Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).
Print-Sources with Known Author: For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. *If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.
Example A:
Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as "symbol-using animals" (3).
Example B:
Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).
Electronic Sources: These may include web pages, online news, or magazine articles.
Example A (Online Magazine Article): One online film critic stated that Fitzcarraldo "has become notorious for its near-failure and many obstacles" (Taylor, “Fitzcarraldo”).
Example B (Web Page): The Purdue OWL is accessed by millions of users every year. Its "MLA Formatting and Style Guide" is one of the most popular resources.

Overview (in order of citation, including punctuation):

Author. (Last Name, First Name)
Title of source.
a. Book Title (in Italics)
b. Webpage/Magazine/Newspaper Article (“in Quotations”)
Example A (Book Title): Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Example B (Article Title): Bagchi, Alaknanda. "Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi's Bashai Tudu." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-50.
Title of container (the larger whole of where the source is located), Italicized and Followed by a Comma
Example: Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff, Vintage, 1994, pp. 306-07.
Other contributors, (Editors, Illustrators, Translators, etc.)
Example: Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage-Random House, 1988.
Edition/Version,
Number, (if a source is part of a numbered sequence)
Publisher, (if there are multiple, list them and separate with a forward slash /)
Publication date,
Location. (page numbers, URL)
Example: Wheelis, Mark. "Investigating Disease Outbreaks Under a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention." Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 6, no. 6, 2000, pp. 595-600, wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/6/00-0607_article. Accessed 8 Feb. 2009.