Check Your MLA Works Cited Format

Once you paste your list of MLA citations into your document, correct these things if necessary:

  • Your Works Cited page should appear at the end of the paper.
  • Works Cited is centered 1 inch from the top of the page.
  • Double space the list, both between citations and within them.
  • When a citation has more than one line, use a hanging indent. To do this, indent the second line, and every line thereafter, to the right one half inch or five spaces.
  • Alphabetize the entire list by the first word of each citation. This may be the author's last name or the first word in a title. Ignore these words if they are the first word in a title: a, an, the.
  • If two or more citations are by the same author, only include the name in the first entry. Thereafter, in place of the name, type three hyphens, followed by a period and the title. Arrange the works listed under the same name in order alphabetically by title.

    Example:

    Simon, Seymour. Planet Mars. Seastar Books, 2008.

    ---. Stars. Rev. ed., Smithsonian, 2006.

    ---. The Universe. Rev. ed., Smithsonian, 2006.

    Thompson, Stan. The Big Bang Theory. Random House, 2014.


Resources

MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021, pp. 5-6, 219-24.

The MLA Style Center: Writing Resources from the Modern Language Association. Modern Language Association of America, 2021, style.mla.org.


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