MLA requires as much of the following information as possible:
Author's name
Title of the work
Title of the website
Name of the website sponsor
Date of the most recent update
URL - web address
Date of access (or the date you looked at the website)
A URL or web address is not enough information for a citation in any paper or project.
Sometimes a URL will lead to a dead link so more details about your source are needed.
Here are examples of a book citation in
MLA:
Works Cited page citation:
English, Darby. How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. MIT Press, 2010.
In text citation in your paper using the author's name:
(English)
Want some practice creating MLA Citations? Here are some quick, fun games to help you practice.
MLA 8th Edition Drag and Drop: Drag and drop elements of a citation to create MLA Citations for a Book.
Citation Game Page for both MLA and APA from the University of Washington with a variety of games.
MLA Style Center - Examples of 5 Basic Citation formats
MLA stands for Modern Language Association, which is the professional organization for scholars of language and literature. MLA publishes an academic journal and requires those who publish within it to follow specific formatting guidelines. These professional standards were used first by professors publishing in the journal, and then adopted by the same for use in the classroom. Eventually, these rules became a style guide that is the publication standard for the Humanities.
Following a common set of standards gives scholars a template for writing clear citations, which in turn allow the reader to access the resources the citations reference. We can learn the format for citation types and plug the information from our sources easily once we know these templates. This page gives examples of common types of citations, first in the format by the information type (author, title, etc.) and followed by concrete examples. It also provides outside resources for more information on the MLA Style.
A citation is reliable way to lead your reader back to the materials you used in your research.
A citation gives credit to an author for their research, writings and ideas.
When you use citations you are
Most databases contain tools to help you create correctly formatted citations for a particular article. One of the advantages of using databases over search engines is the ease of creating and exporting citations. Below are some examples of popularly used databases and how to create and export citations from selected articles.
One easy way to get a copy of the citation is to email the citation and the article to yourself. Other options are listed below with detailed instructions for each database.
To export citations from Academic Search Complete EBSCOoa: