Formatting the Works Cited Section

In MLA style, all the sources you cite throughout the text of your paper are listed together in full in the Works Cited section, which comes after the main text of your paper.

Page numbers: Just as the rest of your paper, the top of the page should retain the right-justified header with your last name and the page number.

Title: On the first line, the title of the page—“Works Cited”—should appear centered and not italicized, bolded, or placed in quotation marks.

Spacing: Like the rest of your paper, this page should be double-spaced and have 1-inch margins (don’t skip an extra line between citations).

Alphabetical order: Starting on the next line after the page title, your references should be listed in alphabetical order by author. Multiple sources by the same author should be listed alphabetically by title and can contain three short dashes (—) in place of repeating the author’s name.

Hanging indents: Each reference should be formatted with what is called a hanging indent. This means the first line of each reference should be flush with the left margin (i.e., not indented), but the rest of that reference should be indented 0.5 inches further. Any word-processing program will let you format this automatically so you don’t have to do it by hand. (In Microsoft Word, for example, you simply highlight your citations, click on the small arrow right next to the word “Paragraph” on the home tab, and in the popup box choose “hanging indent” under the “Special” section. Click OK, and you’re done.)

Instead of offering a specific way to format each and every source, MLA offers a streamlined approach using something called “containers.”

Containers

These containers, pictured below, provide you with the required elements, order, and punctuation for each of your Works Cited entries.

As you work to format your Works Cited, you will notice some sources require only one container, as shown on the right. These are sources that you access directly from their original publication, such as books, an online magazine article, and general websites. You should follow the order of items listed in the container, following the simplified punctuation rules you see in the container as well. You will place a period after the author and the title of the source. Then, you should place commas after each item until the end of the entry.

Two containers are required for sources that you access through places like library databases. An example of MLA’s “two container” structure is depicted at the left. Here, you will notice there is a place for the first container, with the original publication information.

Below the first container, the second container provides publication information for where you retrieved that information. For example, a journal article you access through your library’s databases will have its original publication information (container 1) and access information from the online database (container 2).

Focus on the Core Elements

Regardless of the source type, you are now asked to locate the same “core elements” from your sources and place them in a standard order in order to create citations. These core elements are explained in detail below. Note that you do not need to memorize every step of this process, but should take this opportunity to understand how citations are created.

You will likely use some kind of citation generator to do this work for you, but you will need a general familiarity so that you can know what information to plug into that citation generator and so that you can understand how to double-check the citation generator’s inevitable mistakes.

Adapted from 

• "MLA End-of-Text Citations" by Lumen Learning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). 

• "MLA Works Cited Entries" by Lumen Learning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). 

• "MLA Works Cited" by Lumen Learning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).