Let me take a guess. Are you a Humanities student who needs to cite in MLA style? Together with your in-text citations, you also need to create a Works Cited list.
It appears at the end of your paper and gives full details of every source that you cited in the text. In this video, I'll walk you through the nine core elements of an MLA reference entry and show you how to format your Works Cited page in the Google Docs environment. If you only need help with formatting, jump straight to this timestamp. Hi, I'm Jessica from Scribbr, here to help you achieve your academic goals.
Begin each source entry with the name of the author or creator. The name of the first author is always inverted, so last name first, then first name. However, when a second author is listed, their name is not inverted.
When a source has three or more authors, only the first author is listed, followed by et al. Always include the full title of the source, including subtitles and title case. The styling of the title depends on the type of source.
Italics, when the source is self-contained, for example, a whole book, movie, or website. Quotation marks, when the source is part of a larger whole, for example, a chapter of a book, a page on a website, or an article in a journal. A container is the larger work that the source you're citing appears in.
For example, a chapter is part of a book, a page is part of a website, and an article is part of a journal. You should italicize the container. Leave out this element if the source is a self-contained whole, like a book. If there are other relevant contributors, like translators or directors, Add them right after the container title. Leave out this element if there are no other contributors.
When there is more than one version of a source, include the version you used. For example, a second edition book or director's cut of a movie. Sources such as journal articles, magazines, and TV shows are often numbered.
Include this element if your source has numbered parts. The publisher is the company responsible for producing and distributing the source. It is usually only included for a book publisher like Oxford University Press or a movie production company like Warner Brothers. Always include the publication year.
If you also know the month and day of publication, include this if relevant. Like this. When a source does not state a publication date, add the date on which you accessed the information at the end of the reference. For example, Access 22nd September 2018. What you include in the location element depends on the type of source you're citing. It could be a page range for a book chapter or journal article, a URL or DOI for an online source, the location of a physical object or performance.
That's quite a lot of elements to handle, huh? Besides creating your references manually, you can also use Scribbr's free citation generator. Let's say I want to cite an article. All you have to do is click on Journal, search the article by title, double-check the information, and click Cite Source. When you have finished entering all the references, you can copy the entire list.
All there's left to do is to format the works cited page. The works cited page follows the general MLA formatting guidelines. Check out this video first if you're not sure what they are. I will quickly set it up now.
Select 12 points in Times New Roman font. For the page header, double click at the top of a page, put in your last name and then insert automatic page numbering, and choose right aligned. Then set 1-inch page margins and line spacing to double.
Now place the section heading Works Cited in plain text and center it at the top of the page. It's important to sort the references in alphabetical order based on the author's last names. If you copy them from Scribbr Citation Generator, the references are automatically in alphabetical order. All that's left to do is format the references with hanging indents which basically indents all the lines except the first. Select the entire list, set left aligned, then pull the arrow on the ruler to half an inch and the rectangle back to zero.
And we're done! That wasn't too hard, right? Now if you need more help with MLA style, we've got all you need in this playlist.
See you there!