How to cite a book in MLA 9

A basic MLA entry for a book has four parts: the author, the title, the publisher and the year.

Works Cited format

Last, First. Title of the Book. Publisher, Year.

Moreno, Lucia. How Cities Remember. Harbor Street Press, 2021.

• Author. Last name first, then the first name as printed on the title page.
• Title. Italic, in title case.
• Publisher. The name as it appears in the book.
• Year. The publication year.

Other details are added only when they apply: an editor or translator, an edition, a volume number, or an e-book’s location.

Editions and reprints

• Edition. Add it after the title if the book is a later one, for example Title of the Book, 3rd ed. MLA says a first edition doesn’t need to be stated, since readers assume it.
• Reprints. You may give the original publication year after the title, followed by the reprint’s publisher and year at the end of the entry.

In-text citation

Use the author’s last name and the page number, with no comma: (Moreno 45).

• If you name the author in your sentence, put only the page in the parentheses: Moreno argues that cities forget slowly (45).
• A work with three or more authors is cited with the first author and “et al.”: (Moreno et al. 45).

Check before you submit

• Which copy you used. Pages differ between editions, so use the page numbers from your copy.
• A chapter, not the whole book. If you cite a chapter by one author in a collection edited by another, the format is different: the chapter’s author and title come first, and the book is the container.
• Alphabetical order. Works Cited entries go in alphabetical order by the first word of each entry.