Official MLA Style Guides

Works Cited: A Quick Guide - From the MLA Style Guide. A practice template is also provided.

Citations by Format - If you are confident citing a book source but aren't sure how to cite a movie, website, etc, check out this page on the MLA Style Guide. 

MLA Format for a Journal Article

Last, First, and First Last. "Title of Article." Title of Journal, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #-#. DOI.

Example

Lester, Catherine. "The Children's Horror Film: Characterizing an 'Impossible' Subgenre." The Velvet Light Trap, vol. 78, no.1, 2016, pp. 22-37. doi.org/10.7560/VLT7803.

Notes

• The first author's name is structured as last name, first name. Following authors are listed as first name last name.
  • If there are 3 or more authors, only list the first author followed by et al. (Latin for "and others").
• The title of the article is in Title Case
  • Refer to this page for information on titles within titles
• The title of the journal is in italics and Title Case
• The volume number is noted with vol.
• The issue number is noted with no.
• Only the year is included for academic journal articles
• Page numbers are noted with pp.
  • Omit the first sets of repeated digits. Pages 225 to 251 would be notated as pp. 225-51
  • A single page is notated as a single p.
• The DOI can be formatted as a link (doi.org/10.1111/jan.15480) or as a number (DOI: 10.1111/jan.15480). If there is no DOI, use a permalink from the Library Search item record or the database you found it in.
• Create a half-inch hanging indent

Parts of a citation:

1. Title

2. Authors

3. Journal Title, Year, volume (issue), page numbers

4. DOI

5. Permalink