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Citations: More on MLA Citations

This page gives a detailed overview of the MLA citation guide. To learn how to create in text citations and works cited pages using MLA, click here

MLA Handbook

What is MLA? MLA style was created by the Modern Language Association of America. It is a set of guidelines used to properly cite sources in research papers to avoid plagiarism. The guidelines are updated on a regular basis to account for changing citation needs and resources. The most current version of MLA is MLA 8

What Needs to be Cited?

What Needs to be Cited? In MLA, information from sources that you have paraphrased, quoted, or otherwise used to write your research paper must be referred to in two places:

  1. In-text citations are a short form of MLA citations used in your research paper, with the author’s last name and the page number enclosed in parenthesis, that refers a reader to bibliographic information in your Works Cited list.
  2. References in the Works Cited list are full MLA citations, which means they include all the bibliographic information needed for a reader to retrieve the sources your information comes from, in an alphabetical list that appears at the end of your research paper.