Generate MLA References for Books with Our Citation Maker
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MLA Book Reference Generator
MLA started as a more or less official standard back in 1951 when the Modern Language Association published it. Over the years, the publisher kept releasing new editions. The final one, the 9th MLA edition, was published in 2021.
MLA established various standards of written communication, including citing sources in research papers. Students often request writing papers and citing sources within humanities disciplines and liberal arts. While more and more academic sources are available online now, citing books is still in high demand.
Principles of Formatting Reference Lists by MLA standards
The MLA standard clearly outlines rules for citing secondary sources when formatting reference lists. The general rules go as follows:
- Have a separate page at the end of your research paper for reference list;
- Label the page Works Cited and center the title (the rest of the text should be aligned left);
- If you use one page of the source, mark it with (p.15);
- For online sources, prioritize using DOI over URL;
To properly format reference lists and cite books, you need to know the basic MLA standard rules for book citing:
- Citing a book with one author
Template – Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.
There are 3 scenarios when you need to add “City of Publication” according to the MLA guide:
- If the book was published before 1900
- If the publisher has offices in more than one country
- If the publisher is unknown in the NA
E.g. – Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. MacMurray, 1999.
- Citing a book with more than one author
If a book has two authors, you are required to list the authors by the same order they are ordered in the book using the “last name, first name” format:
E.g. – Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
In case there are three authors or more, you only need to list the author that appears first in the book, followed by “et al.”
E.g. – Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.
- Electronics sources – E-book
E-book – Author(s). Title of Book. E-Book, Publisher, Publication Date.
Requirements for MLA In-Text Citations: Parenthetical References
To refer to a book in your paper, you need to use parenthetical citations, and MLA outlines requirements for those as well. In-text citations should be followed with parentheses containing a single word or phrase that can be easily paired with the corresponding entry in your references list:
- If the last name of the author doesn’t appear in the sentence – (Author last name, page number)
E.g. – Human beings have been described as “symbol-using animals” (Burke 3).
- If the last name of the author appears in the sentence – (page number)
E.g. – Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as “symbol-using animals” (3).
- Citing books with two authors follows the above rules only now you need to mention both authors by their last names
E.g. last names in the sentence – Best and Marcus argue that one should read a text for what it says on its surface, rather than looking for some hidden meaning (9).
E.g. no signal words in the sentence – The authors claim that surface reading looks at what is “evident, perceptible, apprehensible in texts” (Best and Marcus 9).
How Citation Generator Can Help You
As a student, you need to deliver your papers according to the outlined requirements. Using proper citation doesn’t only give proper credit to the authors of sources and ideas you used, but it also makes it easy for the readers to find more about sources you’ve included in your paper. As you can see, learning how to cite books according to all MLA standards is quite hard.
Fortunately, you can use the MLA book reference generator by Grades Fixer. Simply select the source you want to cite, set the citation style to MLA, enter the required data in the box, and hit the big green “Search” button.
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