MLA Works Cited Page: Format Rules and Entry Examples

TL;DR — The Works Cited page starts on a new page at the end of an MLA paper, with "Works Cited" centered and unformatted at the top. Entries are double-spaced, alphabetized by the first word (usually the author's last name), and use a half-inch hanging indent. Each entry follows the MLA 9 core-elements order: Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Date, Location.

MLA 9 does not give you a separate rule for every kind of source. It gives one template, and every entry on the Works Cited page is that template with the empty slots removed. Learn the template and the page layout, and the entry for a podcast episode is no harder than the entry for a book.

The core-elements template

An entry is built from up to nine elements in fixed order, with fixed punctuation after each.

Author.
Title of Source.
Title of Container,
Other Contributors,
Version,
Number,
Publisher,
Publication Date,
Location.

The first two elements end with a period. The rest end with commas, except the last element present, which ends with a period. If an element does not apply, skip it and continue; the punctuation after the previous element stays the same.

Two ideas make the template work.

Container. The larger whole that holds the source. An article’s container is the journal; a chapter’s container is the book; a web page’s container is the website; a TV episode’s container is the series. A source can sit in two containers: an article in a journal that you read in a database is inside the journal and the journal is inside the database. When that happens, the elements from container through location repeat for the second container.

Titles. A title is italicized when the work stands alone (book, journal, website, film) and placed in double quotation marks when it is part of a container (article, chapter, web page, episode, poem in a collection).

Entries by source type

Every author, title, and publisher below is invented for illustration. Copy the punctuation and order, not the content.

Book, one author

Halvorsen, Ingrid. The Lamplighter and Other Stories. Northwind Press, 2019.

Book, two authors. Only the first name is inverted.

Halvorsen, Ingrid, and Marcus O. Bell. Reading the Unreliable Narrator. 2nd ed., Northwind Press, 2022.

Book, three or more authors. First author plus “et al.”

Raghunathan, Priya, et al. Composition in the First Year. Riverside UP, 2021.

Edited book, and a chapter in one

Delgado, Ana, editor. Approaches to Short Fiction. Halvorsen State UP, 2020.

Chen, Xiu. "Repetition as Evidence." Approaches to Short Fiction, edited by Ana Delgado, Halvorsen State UP, 2020, pp. 41-63.

Journal article with a DOI. Volume and issue are abbreviated “vol.” and “no.”; the DOI is the location, written as a full https://doi.org/ link.

Okonkwo, Daniel. "Three Tellings of One Night: Narrative Instability in Halvorsen." Journal of Short Fiction Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2023, pp. 115-32, https://doi.org/10.0000/jsfs.2023.0142.

Journal article from a database. Two containers: the journal, then the database.

Okonkwo, Daniel. "Three Tellings of One Night: Narrative Instability in Halvorsen." Journal of Short Fiction Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2023, pp. 115-32. Academic Archive Online, https://doi.org/10.0000/jsfs.2023.0142.

Page on a website with an author

Nakamura, Tomoko. "Why Students Misread Frame Narratives." The Close Reading Desk, 12 Mar. 2024, www.closereadingdesk.example/frame-narratives.

Page on a website, no author, no date. Start with the title; add an access date because the page is undated.

"Glossary of Narrative Terms." Riverside Community College Writing Center, www.rcc-writing.example/glossary. Accessed 30 Sept. 2026.

Organization as author and publisher. When the author and publisher are the same, skip the author and start with the title; the organization appears as publisher.

Style Guide for Student Papers. Halvorsen State University Writing Program, 2025, writing.halvorsen.example/guide.

Newspaper or magazine article online

Bell, Marcus O. "The Return of the Short Story Collection." The Northwind Review, 8 Jan. 2026, www.northwindreview.example/short-story-return.

Video on a sharing site. The uploader goes in the contributor slot when it differs from the creator; when they are the same, the channel name serves as author.

Close Reading Desk. "Unreliable Narrators in Ten Minutes." YouTube, 4 Nov. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=example.

Two or more works by the same author. Give the name in the first entry; in later entries replace it with three hyphens and a period, and alphabetize those entries by title.

Halvorsen, Ingrid. The Lamplighter and Other Stories. Northwind Press, 2019.

---. "On Writing the Same Night Three Times." Northwind Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, pp. 9-14.

Translated book

Ferreira, Luís. The Night Watchman. Translated by Ana Delgado, Northwind Press, 2018.

Months in dates are abbreviated to three or four letters (Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.); May, June, and July are written in full. Page ranges drop repeated digits: 115-32, not 115-132. If you are unsure how a source fits the template, the source-by-source logic in Citations in Research Papers: A Practical Guide to Crediting Sources may settle it.

Page layout

The Works Cited page follows the same physical settings as the rest of the paper: one-inch margins, a legible 12-point font, double spacing, and the running header with your last name and page number in the top-right corner. The header continues the paper’s numbering; if the essay ends on page 7, Works Cited is page 8.

Element	Rule
Position	New page, immediately after the last page of text
Heading	“Works Cited,” centered, one inch from the top, same font as body, no bold, italics, underline, or quotation marks
Single entry	Heading becomes “Work Cited”
Spacing	Double throughout; no extra blank lines between entries
Indent	Hanging indent of 0.5 inch: first line flush left, subsequent lines indented
Order	Alphabetical by the first element of each entry
Numbering	None; entries are not numbered or bulleted

Set the hanging indent with the paragraph settings (Word: Paragraph → Indentation → Special → Hanging → 0.5”; Google Docs: Format → Align & indent → Indentation options → Special indent → Hanging). Do not create it with the Tab key or spaces; it breaks the moment you edit an entry.

Alphabetizing

Entries are sorted letter by letter by whatever comes first: the author’s last name, or the title when there is no author. Skip A, An, and The at the start of a title. Treat “et al.” entries by the first author’s name. A single-author entry precedes a multi-author entry starting with the same person (“Halvorsen, Ingrid” before “Halvorsen, Ingrid, and Marcus O. Bell”). Two authors with the same last name are ordered by first name.

A sample Works Cited page

Here is how the fictional sources above would print together at the end of the paper whose first page was laid out in MLA Format Heading and Header. Line breaks reflect a half-inch hanging indent on letter paper.

                                                          Raghunathan 8

                              Works Cited

Bell, Marcus O. "The Return of the Short Story Collection." The

     Northwind Review, 8 Jan. 2026, www.northwindreview.example/short-

     story-return.

Chen, Xiu. "Repetition as Evidence." Approaches to Short Fiction, edited

     by Ana Delgado, Halvorsen State UP, 2020, pp. 41-63.

"Glossary of Narrative Terms." Riverside Community College Writing

     Center, www.rcc-writing.example/glossary. Accessed 30 Sept. 2026.

Halvorsen, Ingrid. The Lamplighter and Other Stories. Northwind Press,

     2019.

---. "On Writing the Same Night Three Times." Northwind Quarterly,

     vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, pp. 9-14.

Okonkwo, Daniel. "Three Tellings of One Night: Narrative Instability in

     Halvorsen." Journal of Short Fiction Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2023,

     pp. 115-32, https://doi.org/10.0000/jsfs.2023.0142.

Italics do not survive a plain-text block: on the real page, The Northwind Review, Approaches to Short Fiction, The Lamplighter and Other Stories, Northwind Quarterly, and Journal of Short Fiction Studies are italicized, and the article and chapter titles stay in quotation marks.

Matching the list to the paper

Every entry on the Works Cited page must correspond to at least one in-text citation, and every in-text citation must lead to exactly one entry. The link is the first element: a citation reading (Okonkwo 118) points to the entry beginning “Okonkwo,” and a citation reading (“Glossary”) points to the entry beginning with that title. If a paper cites two works by Halvorsen, the in-text citations add a short title to tell them apart: (Halvorsen, Lamplighter 22) and (Halvorsen, “On Writing” 11).

Before submitting, read the paper once with only the citations in mind, ticking off each entry on the list. Anything unticked either needs a citation added or should be removed from the list. MLA Page Format and In-Text Citations covers the citation side of this pairing in detail.

Details that vary, and what to do about them

URLs. MLA 9 asks for the URL as it appears in your browser, without angle brackets, and allows you to leave off the “https://” prefix. Some instructors want the prefix kept; others want URLs omitted entirely. Choose one approach for the whole list and confirm it against the assignment sheet. DOIs always keep the https://doi.org/ form, and a DOI is preferred over a URL whenever one exists. A permalink or stable URL provided by a database is preferred over the address bar’s long session URL.

Publisher names. Omit business words such as Inc., Co., and Ltd.; write University Press as UP (Riverside UP, Halvorsen State UP). Leave out the publisher entirely for periodicals, for websites whose title is essentially the same as the publisher’s name, and for works published by their author.

Missing elements. Skip them silently. MLA 9 does not use “n.p.” or “n.d.” in Works Cited entries. If a date is missing and matters, an access date at the end lets the reader judge currency.

Dates. Give the most specific date the source provides: year alone for most books, day-month-year for news and web content, season and year for some journals (“Spring 2024”).

Sources with unusual shapes. Personal interviews, lectures, social media posts, and government documents all fit the template, though some elements need judgment. When two reasonable renderings exist, pick the one that helps a reader locate the source and keep it consistent across the list. The Works Cited page is a finding aid, not a test of memorized rules.

Common mistakes

“Works Cited” in bold, underlined, quotation marks, or a larger font. Plain, centered text.
Bibliography, References, or Sources as the heading. Only “Works Cited” (or “Work Cited” for one entry) is MLA.
Entries in the order they were cited, or numbered. Alphabetical, unnumbered.
Hanging indent applied backwards (first line indented, rest flush) or faked with spaces.
Extra blank lines between entries. Double spacing with nothing added.
Sources listed that never appear in the text. Remove them or move them to a Works Consulted list if one is requested.
First names inverted for every author (“Halvorsen, Ingrid, and Bell, Marcus”). Only the first author is inverted.
Titles of standalone works in quotation marks, or article titles in italics. Standalone = italics; part of a container = quotation marks.
Full page ranges (115-132). Drop repeated digits: 115-32.
“http://” and “https://” appearing on some URLs and not others. One approach throughout.
Missing period at the end of the entry. Every entry ends with a period, including after a URL or DOI.
A one-entry list headed “Works Cited.” Singular: “Work Cited.”

Checklist

New page, running header continues the page numbering.
“Works Cited” centered, plain, at the top.
Double-spaced, half-inch hanging indent set in paragraph settings.
Entries alphabetical by first element; A, An, The ignored.
Each entry follows the core-elements order and punctuation.
Standalone titles italicized; contained titles in quotation marks.
Two authors: only the first inverted; three or more: first author plus et al.
Same author, later entries: three hyphens and a period, sorted by title.
DOIs as https://doi.org/ links; URLs handled consistently.
Missing elements skipped, no placeholders; access date added where the source is undated or unstable.
Every entry cited in the text, every citation matched by an entry.
Every entry ends with a period.

A Works Cited page built this way takes about a minute per source once the template is in your head. The place to spend the time is on checking each entry against the source itself, because a misspelled author or a wrong volume number is the one error a reader will notice when they try to follow the trail.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a Works Cited page and a bibliography?

A Works Cited list contains only the sources you actually cite in the paper. A bibliography, which MLA calls a Works Consulted list, includes everything you read while researching, cited or not. Most MLA assignments want Works Cited. If an instructor asks for Works Consulted, use that as the heading and include background reading, formatted with the same rules.

How do I alphabetize an entry that starts with a number or a title beginning with The?

Ignore A, An, and The at the start of a title and alphabetize by the next word, so “The Lamplighter” files under L. Titles that begin with a numeral are alphabetized as if the number were spelled out: a work called “1984 Revisited” goes under N for nineteen. Names with particles such as de or van follow the way the person is commonly listed; when unsure, check a library catalog.

Do I include the date I accessed a website?

MLA 9 makes access dates optional. Add one when the source has no publication date, when the content is likely to change or disappear, or when your instructor requires it. Put it at the end of the entry as “Accessed 30 Sept. 2026.” For a dated journal article with a DOI, an access date adds nothing and can be left out.

What if a source is missing the publisher or the page numbers?

Leave the element out and move to the next one. MLA’s core-elements template is a list of slots, and empty slots are simply skipped, with no placeholder such as “n.p.” Websites often have no publisher distinct from the site name, and online articles frequently have no page numbers; both entries are complete without them. Never invent a value to fill the gap.