MLA Works Cited Page: Format, Rules and a Full Example

The MLA works cited format is set by the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021), and it is the same for a two-page response in Ms. Rodriguez's AP Literature class and a 15-page research paper for ENGL 1302. Paste a source into the citation maker above to get a correctly punctuated entry, then lay out the page with these rules.

Is the Works Cited title bold?

No. MLA treats the title like the rest of the paper's text: centered, in the same font and size, with no bold, italics, underlining or quotation marks. Teachers mark a bold title as a formatting error more often than you'd think.

Work Cited or Works Cited?

Use Works Cited when you list two or more sources. MLA's own guidance switches to the singular, Work Cited, when the list has only one entry, which happens with short literary responses that analyze a single novel or poem.

Which sources belong on the list

Include every source you quote, paraphrase or summarize, and only those. Purdue OWL's guide to the MLA Works Cited page basic format is a reliable second check on these rules, and our MLA Citation Maker builds each entry in the right order for you.

A hanging indent is the reverse of a normal paragraph indent: the first line of each entry starts at the left margin, and every line after it is pushed in 0.5 inch. It lets a reader scan the left edge for the word each entry is sorted by. Don't fake it with Tab or spaces; the lines break wrongly as soon as you edit.

Hanging indent in Microsoft Word

1. Select every entry below the Works Cited title (not the title itself).
2. On the Home tab, open the Paragraph settings dialog with the small arrow in the corner of the Paragraph group.
3. On the Indents and Spacing tab, under Special, choose Hanging, and set By to 0.5".
4. While you're there, set Line spacing to Double and Before and After to 0 pt, then select OK.

Hanging indent in Google Docs

1. Highlight the entries.
2. Open Format, then Align & indent, then Indentation options.
3. Under Special indent, choose Hanging and enter 0.5 inches.
4. Select Apply. Set double spacing under Format, then Line & paragraph spacing.

Checking the indentation

Zoom out and scan the left edge. Any entry whose first line is indented missed the setting, so apply it again. If you paste entries from the MLA citation generator, paste first and indent after.

You alphabetize by whatever comes first in each entry: usually the author's last name, or the title when there's no author. Here is how to alphabetize a works cited page when the easy rule runs out.

Ignore A, An and The

When an entry starts with a title, skip an opening A, An or The and sort by the next word. The Shallows goes under S, and "A Modest Proposal" goes under M. Keep the article in the entry itself; you only skip it when deciding the order.

Letter by letter

Compare names letter by letter, ignoring spaces and punctuation. A numeral starting a title sorts as if spelled out.

The same author more than once

List that author's works alphabetically by title. Give the name in the first entry only; in every entry after it, type three hyphens followed by a period in place of the name. In the sample page below, Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory comes before Will in the World, and the second entry begins with "---."

One author alone and with coauthors

When someone appears as a sole author and also as the first of two or more authors, the solo works come first. Coauthored works then follow, sorted by the coauthors' last names.

Let a tool do the sorting

If you type your list by hand, paste it into the Alphabetizer to put it in order, then check the A, An and The cases yourself. Entries saved in the free MLA citation maker sort themselves as you add them.

Every entry follows MLA's core elements in a fixed order: author, title of source, title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date and location. You include the elements your source has and skip the rest. These are the source types students cite most.

Works cited entries for books

A book needs the author, the italic title, the publisher and the year. MLA 9 drops the city of publication and shortens "University Press" to "UP," as in Princeton UP.

Works cited entries for websites

A web page needs the author if one is named, the page title in quotation marks, the italic website name, the publisher when it differs from the website name, the date, and the URL. When an organization is both author and publisher, start with the title. For no-date pages, access dates and social media, see our full guide on how to cite a website in MLA.

Two authors and three or more

Two authors appear in the source's order, joined by "and," with only the first name reversed. Three or more become the first author plus "et al."

Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays

Cite the edition you actually read, with its editors: the sample page below cites the Folger edition of Hamlet edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. A Macbeth essay works the same way with your class's edition. If you watched a production, cite the film or performance as a separate entry.

The Bible

Start with the version's title as printed, in italics, then the publisher and the year from your copy's copyright page: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway, [year].

When you're unsure which elements apply, let the MLA citation maker format it: fill in the details your source shows and it puts them in MLA 9 order.

Here is a full MLA works cited example for a student essay on Hamlet written for an AP Literature class. Below, each entry has the 0.5-inch hanging indent it would have in your document.

Why the entries are in this order

Bloom comes first under B. Greenblatt's two books follow, ordered by title (H before W), with three hyphens replacing his name in the second. The film has no author in the first position, so it sorts by its title under H, after Greenblatt. Jones and Shakespeare finish the list. If the essay focused on Branagh's choices as a director, MLA also allows starting the film's entry with "Branagh, Kenneth, director."

What the citations in the essay look like

Each entry matches a short citation in the text, such as (Bloom 409), or (Greenblatt, Will in the World 45) to tell his two books apart. The play is cited by act, scene and line: (Ham. 3.1.64). These numbers are placeholders showing the form.

These names get used interchangeably, but the right title depends on what the list contains and which style your class uses.

Is a works cited page MLA or APA?

"Works Cited" is MLA's term. APA style calls the same list "References" and formats it differently: author initials instead of first names, the year right after the author, and sentence-case titles. If your syllabus asks for APA, the APA Citation Machine formats that list instead.

When the list gets annotations

If an assignment asks you to summarize and evaluate each source under its entry, you're writing an annotated bibliography, which has its own layout. Our guide to the MLA annotated bibliography covers it with three complete examples.

The list and your in-text citations work as a pair. Each citation in your sentences gives just enough for a reader to find the right entry: usually the author's last name and a page number, such as (Bloom 409). The first word of the citation must match the first word of the entry, which is why a source with no author is cited by a shortened title, such as ("About Sleep").

If a citation names an author who isn't on the list, a source was probably cut from the draft; if an entry has no citation, it doesn't belong on the list.

Our guide to MLA in-text citation covers signal phrases, page numbers, et al. and sources with no page numbers in detail.

These are the errors instructors circle most often on an MLA works cited page, and each one takes a minute to fix.

A final check before you submit

Read the list against your paper: same names, same titles, every entry ending in a period. If a single entry looks wrong, rebuild it with the free MLA citation maker and paste it back in. For more help with citations and formatting, browse all our student guides.