Create a spot-on reference in MLA 8 and 9
Basic rules
For referencing a journal article in MLA Style (both 8th and 9th editions), the following elements should be stated: author(s) of the article, article title, journal title, volume number, issue number, month (if available) and year of publication, and pages where the article is located.
For online sources, the DOI number or the URL address should also be given (see the difference in the templates below).
How do I create a reference in MLA 8 or MLA 9?
The easiest way would be to use an online citation generation tool, such as Grafiati. Usually, you won’t even have to type in all the article’s data by yourself, because our reference generator has an extensive database of multiple types of academic sources that you can easily add to your bibliography.
But if you’re used to making your reference list manually, here are the instructions.
If you want to cite a journal article in MLA 8, use the following referencing template:
Author(s). "Article Title." Journal Title, volume number, issue number, month and year of publication, pages, doi: DOI.
Or:
Author(s). "Article Title." Journal Title, volume number, issue number, month and year of publication, pages, URL. Accessed date of access.
Learn more on how to cite authors here.
If, however, you are required to use the 9th edition of MLA citation style, you need to take into consideration some slight changes between the two styles. Here is the MLA 9 reference template for a journal article:
Author(s). "Article Title." Journal Title, volume number, issue number, month and year of publication, pages, DOI as a hyperlink or URL.
As you can see, the difference between MLA 8 and MLA 9 in journal references is rather minor:
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8th edition of Modern Language Association Style |
9th edition of Modern Language Association Style |
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The articles’ DOI identifiers are presented as alphanumeric values: doi:10.7748/ns.10.8.23.s35 |
The DOIs are formatted like hyperlinks: https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.10.8.23.s35 |
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For online journal articles, you need to specify the access date wherever possible. |
Include the access date only if you can’t find the publication date of the article you are citing. |
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Use a hyphen in the article’s page range: pp. 32-47 |
Use an en dash between the page numbers: pp. 32–47 |
Examples of references in a list of works cited:
MLA 8:
Kavalir, Monika. “Modal Structure in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.” Acta Neophilologica, vol. 44, no. 1-2, Dec. 2011, pp. 103-11, doi:10.4312/an.44.1-2.103-111.
Fujiwara, Yuta, et al. “Practical and Innate Carbon–Hydrogen Functionalization of Heterocycles.” Nature (London), vol. 492, no. 7427, Nov. 2012, pp. 95-99, doi:10.1038/nature11680.
Patel, Neepa, et al. “Sensory Aspects of Movement Disorders.” Lancet Neurology, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 100-12, doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(13)70213-8.
MLA 9:
Ledda, Bernardetta, et al. "Small RNAs in Eucaryotes: New Clues for Amplifying microRNA Benefits." Cell & Bioscience, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13578-019-0370-3.
Bosker, Hans Rutger, et al. "How Visual Cues to Speech Rate Influence Speech Perception." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 73, no. 10, Apr. 2020, pp. 1523–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820914564.