MLA gives you more freedom in an annotated bibliography than APA does, and that freedom is where most students go wrong. The Handbook says annotations may be a few phrases or a full paragraph, descriptive or evaluative, in sentences or not. What it does not say is that your instructor will have a preference, so the first rule is to read the assignment sheet and find the words summarize, evaluate, or reflect. Whichever appear are what the annotation must do. The formatting, by contrast, is fixed, and this guide starts there.
Page setup and layout
An MLA annotated bibliography looks like a Works Cited page with paragraphs under each entry. If you have set up an MLA paper before, everything except the annotation indent is familiar; if not, MLA Format for Research Papers: A Step-by-Step Setup Guide covers the page from the top.
| Element | Rule |
|---|---|
| Margins | 1 inch on all sides |
| Font | Readable, 12-point; Times New Roman is the usual choice |
| Line spacing | Double throughout, including inside and between entries |
| Heading (first page only) | Your name, instructor’s name, course, date, each on its own line at the top left |
| Running head | Your surname and the page number, top right, every page |
| Title | Annotated Bibliography (or Annotated List of Works Cited), centered, plain text, no bold or italics |
| Entry order | Alphabetical by the first author’s surname, or by title when there is no author |
| Entry indent | Hanging indent of 0.5 inch: first line at the margin, later lines indented |
| Annotation | Begins on a new line after the entry, indented 1 inch from the left margin |
| Numbering | None |
The one-inch annotation indent is the detail that separates MLA from APA. In APA the annotation lines up with the hanging indent at 0.5 inch (see Annotated Bibliography in APA Format: Sample Entries and Rules); in MLA it sits a further half inch in, so the annotation is visibly a step inside the entry. In a word processor, set the entry paragraph with a 0.5-inch hanging indent, press Enter, and give the annotation paragraph a 1-inch left indent with no first-line or hanging indent. If your annotation has more than one paragraph, indent the first line of the second paragraph an additional 0.5 inch.
Date format follows MLA’s day-month-year pattern (14 Mar. 2023), with months longer than four letters abbreviated.
A weak annotation, rewritten
The most common failing has nothing to do with indents. It is the annotation that describes a source without judging it. Here is one for a fictional journal article, first as it often arrives, then revised.
Before
This article is about community gardens and food access. The author talks about how gardens help people get fresh vegetables. He looks at several cities and gives a lot of data. It was published in a journal in 2021. This source is very useful for my paper and I will use it.
After
Abernathy measures the distance from 38 community gardens in three Midwestern cities to the nearest full-service grocery store and compares produce prices in each neighborhood before and after the garden opened. He finds that gardens in areas more than a mile from a grocer lowered local produce prices modestly, while gardens near existing stores had no measurable effect. The sample is small and the price data cover only two growing seasons, which the author acknowledges. The distance measure, however, is the clearest in the literature I have found and gives my paper a way to define “food access” that does not depend on self-reporting. This will anchor the second section.
What changed: the revision names the method (distance measurement, price comparison), the finding (effect depends on distance from a grocer), a limitation (small sample, short period), and the use (a definition of food access for one section). Every sentence carries information the reader could not get from the title. The “before” version could describe a thousand articles; the “after” describes one.
The sample list
The entries below belong to an invented paper on community gardens and neighborhood food access. Authors, titles, and findings are fictional; the formatting follows MLA 9. On the page, each entry would have a hanging indent and each annotation the one-inch block indent described above; the blockquotes here stand in for that indent.
Abernathy, Joel. “Plots and Pantries: Measuring Food Access Near Urban Community Gardens.” Journal of Urban Foodways, vol. 12, no. 2, 2021, pp. 88–107. https://doi.org/10.0000/juf.2021.12.2.88.
Abernathy measures the distance from 38 community gardens in three Midwestern cities to the nearest full-service grocery store and compares produce prices in each neighborhood before and after the garden opened. He finds that gardens in areas more than a mile from a grocer lowered local produce prices modestly, while gardens near existing stores had no measurable effect. The sample is small and the price data cover only two growing seasons, which the author acknowledges. The distance measure, however, is the clearest in the literature I have found and gives my paper a way to define “food access” that does not depend on self-reporting. This will anchor the second section.
“Community Garden Census 2023.” Greenway Coalition, 14 Mar. 2023, www.example.org/census-2023.
The Greenway Coalition, a nonprofit that supports garden start-ups, counts active community gardens by state and reports plot sizes, waiting-list lengths, and the share of gardens on formerly vacant lots. The census is self-reported by garden coordinators, so under-counting in regions where the Coalition has few contacts is likely, and the organization has an interest in showing growth. Even so, no other source gives national figures at this level of detail, and the raw spreadsheet is downloadable. I will cite the waiting-list data as evidence of unmet demand and note the reporting bias when I do.
Nakamura-Reyes, Celia. Growing Rooms: Community Gardens and the Politics of Vacant Land. Harbor Street Press, 2019.
Nakamura-Reyes, an urban historian, traces how four cities decided which vacant lots became gardens and which were sold to developers between 1975 and 2015. Her argument is that gardens survive where residents gained a legal claim to the land early, not where the soil or the need was greatest. Chapters 3 and 6 are the most relevant: they document the ownership disputes that closed gardens in two of the four cities. The book does not address food access directly, but it explains why gardens cluster in some neighborhoods and vanish from others, which my paper needs in order to avoid treating garden location as random.
Quan, Lisbeth, and Marcus Ferreira. “The Lot on Ninth Street.” Riverside Ledger, 2 Oct. 2022, www.example.com/lot-ninth-street.
A long-form newspaper feature following one garden in a mid-sized river city through a season, from the spring plot lottery to the fall harvest sale. The reporters interview eleven gardeners and the city’s land-bank director and describe how produce is shared with two neighboring households per plot. As journalism it offers no systematic data, and the gardeners quoted were chosen for their stories rather than their representativeness. Its value is illustrative: it gives the paper a concrete scene to open with and a quotation from a gardener about how far she previously traveled for vegetables, which connects to Abernathy’s distance measure.
What each annotation does
MLA annotations are generally shorter than APA ones, and the four above show the range.
Abernathy is the full three-part annotation: summary (two sentences), evaluation (one sentence on limits, one on strength), reflection (one sentence on use). At about 110 words it is at the upper end for MLA coursework.
Greenway Coalition is weighted toward evaluation because the source is an advocacy organization’s self-reported data. Note that the entry begins with the title: MLA 9 says that when an organization is both author and publisher, you skip the author slot and name the organization only as the container or publisher. The annotation then refers to the organization by name.
Nakamura-Reyes is mostly summary with a pointer to the specific chapters, which is the sensible way to annotate a book you will use only part of. The final sentence explains the source’s role in the argument rather than promising to cite a figure from it.
Quan and Ferreira is an honest annotation of a weak source. Newspaper features rarely belong in a research paper’s evidence, but they can supply an opening scene or a voice. The annotation says so, names the limitation (no systematic data, hand-picked interviewees), and justifies the inclusion. Instructors respect this more than an annotation that pretends every source is equally strong.
If your assignment leads into a longer synthesis, the evaluation sentences are the raw material. How to Write a Bibliographic Essay: A Map of Your Sources shows what the next step looks like when annotations become connected prose.
MLA 9 entry patterns
The annotation only counts if the entry above it is right. MLA 9 builds every entry from the same sequence of core elements, each followed by the punctuation shown:
Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.Skip any element that does not apply. The patterns for the four source types in the sample:
Journal article
Lastname, Firstname. "Article Title in Title Case." Journal Name, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. first–last. DOI or URL.
Book
Lastname, Firstname. Book Title in Title Case. Publisher, Year.
Web page (organization is author and publisher)
"Page Title." Site Name, Day Mon. Year, URL.
Article with two authors
Lastname, Firstname, and Firstname Lastname. "Title." Publication Name, Day Mon. Year, URL.Rules that matter at the entry level:
- Titles use title case: capitalize the first and last words and all principal words. Book, journal, website, and newspaper titles are italic; article and page titles are in quotation marks.
- Two authors: first name inverted, second in normal order, joined by “and”. Three or more: first author’s name followed by “et al.”
- “vol.” and “no.” are abbreviated and lowercase; “pp.” precedes a page range and “p.” a single page.
- A DOI is preferred over a URL when the source has one, written as a full https://doi.org/ link. For URLs, MLA 9 accepts the full address including https://; some instructors prefer it trimmed, so ask.
- An access date (“Accessed 5 Sept. 2024.”) is optional but recommended for web sources that carry no publication date or that may change.
- The publisher is omitted for journals, for websites whose name matches the publisher, and for newspapers.
The full logic of the container system, including sources nested inside databases, is set out in What Is MLA Format? A Plain-Language Guide for Humanities Writers.
Common mistakes
- Annotation at the wrong indent. Flush left, or lined up with the hanging indent at 0.5 inch (the APA position). MLA wants a full inch.
- Bold or italic title. Annotated Bibliography is plain text, centered, same font as everything else.
- Summary only. Restating the source without a sentence on reliability, scope, or use. Reread the assignment verbs.
- Copying the abstract or the publisher’s blurb. Similarity checkers catch this as readily as they catch copied essay paragraphs.
- Inconsistent form. Half the annotations in full sentences, half in fragments. Either is allowed; mixing is not.
- Sentence-case titles (“Plots and pantries: measuring food access…”) carried over from APA habits.
- Entries listed in the order you found them rather than alphabetically.
- Extra blank lines between entries or between an entry and its annotation. Double spacing is the only spacing.
Checklist
- Heading block (name, instructor, course, date) top left on the first page; surname and page number top right on every page.
- Title Annotated Bibliography centered and plain.
- Entries alphabetical by author surname or, for works without an author, by title (ignoring A, An, The).
- Each entry in MLA 9 form: title case, italics for containers, quotation marks for parts, “vol.” and “no.” abbreviated, DOI or URL at the end, hanging indent of 0.5 inch.
- Each annotation on a new line, indented 1 inch, double-spaced.
- Each annotation does what the assignment asks: summarize, evaluate, reflect, or all three.
- Consistent style across annotations (all sentences or all phrases).
- No copied language from the source’s abstract or blurb.
- Length per annotation roughly even, typically 3 to 6 sentences unless the assignment specifies otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
Does an MLA annotated bibliography need a separate Works Cited page?
No. The annotated bibliography is the works-cited list, with annotations added. If the annotated bibliography is attached to an essay, some instructors want it in place of the Works Cited page and others want both; when both are required, the plain Works Cited lists only the sources actually cited in the essay, while the annotated list may include everything you read.
Can MLA annotations be written as phrases instead of full sentences?
The MLA Handbook allows either, as long as you are consistent within the list. Phrase-style annotations (“Survey of 40 gardens; useful demographic tables; no cost data”) are quicker to read and common in short assignments. Full sentences are safer for coursework because instructors usually want to see you evaluate, and evaluation is hard to do in fragments.
How do I annotate a source that has no author?
Start the entry with the title, alphabetize it by the first word other than A, An, or The, and write the annotation exactly as you would for any other source. In the annotation, refer to the work by its title or by the organization behind it. If an organization is both the author and the publisher, MLA 9 says to begin with the title and list the organization only as publisher.
Should the annotation say whether I will use the source in my paper?
Only if the assignment asks for it, but most do, and it is the easiest sentence to write. One line at the end of the annotation, such as “This report will supply the enrollment figures for the second section,” shows the instructor that the list is a working tool rather than a formatting exercise. Leave it out for sources you have decided not to use, or say briefly why you dropped them.