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MLA Style Guide to 9th Edition

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers within the liberal arts and humanities.  The current edition in use is the 9th edition.

This sourcebook below called the MLA HANDBOOK, and published by the Modern Language Association provides the complete details.  This book can be found at any one of your local Ivy Tech Lake County campus libraries for your personal use there in the library.  It is located in the Reference collection.

Or look at this citation libguide for a concise view of the main MLA Style features!  Check on additional links below for Works Cited (Reference) page, and the basics of in-text citations.

For examples how to cite various source types, such as books, journal articles or websites, start with the 2-page MLA QUICK GUIDE, or  the more detailed MLA Citations by Coding Legends.                        

MLA Quick Guide - 9th ed

MLA Handbook 9th ed.

MLA Handbook 9th ed.

Published in 2021, this book can be found in any of the three Lake County Ivy Tech libraries.  A copy is also in the Tutoring Center in the Arts & Sciences building!  

This gives you the complete information on any MLA questions.  

The call number is:  REF 808.02 MLA 2021.

Ask for staff assistance in locating the book.

Creating MLA Citations - 9th ed

The elements of a Works Cited citation are:

  • Author (Who is responsible for this work?)
  • Title (What is the work called?)
  • Container (Is this part of a larger work?)
  • Date (When was it published, reviewed, or accessed?)
  • Location (Where can I access this?)

In MLA style, the elements are ordered like this below: 

 Author, A.   Title.    Source Title, Publisher.    Date.   https://doi/org#

Journal Sources include Volume, Issue, and Page numbers.  Per example:

 Journal Vol. 22, No. 3 (2020): 101-111.

Use URL, if no DOI.  Use the Permalink for database articles

Works Cited Page Tips - 9th ed

MLA 9 Follows a standard citation format referred to as a "core element" standard.  Please refer to the image below to see the standard:

            

The correct punctuation mark follows each element, unless it is the final element, which above is a period. These form the citation basics of a Works Cited pages.

The concept of containers is crucial to MLA style.  When the source being documented forms part of a larger whole, the larger whole can be thoughts of as a container that holds the source.  For example, a short story may be contained in an anthology.  The short story is the source, and the anthology is the container.

An actual example when citing a book would look like this when using MLA 9:

Goodwin, Doris. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon & Schuster, 2012.

MLA First Page format

Here is how the first page should look.

In-Text Citations Tips - 9th ed.

What is an in-text citation?

  • Writers use in-text citations (sometimes called parenthetical citations) to give credit to quoted, paraphrased, or summarized source material.  In MLA style, there are two required pieces of information to include in an in-text citation.  
  1. Author's name
  2. Page number of cited material (if applicable).
  • How these pieces of information are formatted in an essay depends on whether or not the writer uses a signal phrase to introduce the upcoming source, as shown in examples below:

Signal Phrase Introducing Source:

Carr argues, "We need to give our minds more room to think" (426).

No Signal Phrase Introducing Source:

It is argued that people "need to give [their] minds more room to think" (Carr 426).​​​​

MLA Student Sample Paper

Below is a sample student paper with the main elements done in MLA style, for the headers, for the first page, page numbers,  in-text citations and a Works Cited page.  This paper is an example of a second year student from the MLA Style blog.