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MLA 9th Edition Citations Guide - Maple Woods

Welcome! Nervous about MLA citations? This is the place for you! Information about in-text citations, bibliography format, and general rules of practice for citations in academia!

MLA Updates from 8th to 9th Edition

In-text citations Changes:

  • If there are three or more authors, use "and others" in the text of the paper but continue to use "et al." in a parenthetical citation

Works Cited Changes: 

  • For an e-book, add "E-book ed." after the book title and before the publisher. 
  • For an audio book, add " audiobook ed." after narrated by and before publisher. 
    • (These are considered versions of the book, so they go in that spot in the citation.)
  • For a database article: if the article is within the database (html or PDF), continue to cite the database. However, if instead there is a link to a website (like nytimes.com), cite as if it's from the website, not the database. 
  • When citing a government agency as author, you may now just use the name as presented by the source (no need for listing bureaucratic hierarchy as before)
  • For publisher, abbreviate University Press as UP, and omit initial articles (such as "the"); also omit Co., Inc., Ltd. Change "&" to "and."
  • Seasons are now lower case in the date element (spring instead of Spring).
  • Continue to omit https:// from URLs except when it is a DOI, include the https://