MLA Format: The Complete MLA 9 Guide with Examples

MLA format is the Modern Language Association's set of rules for laying out a paper and citing sources, and it is the default style in most English, literature, language and humanities courses. The current rules come from the MLA Handbook, 9th edition, released in April 2021. This guide covers everything a college paper needs: the page settings, step-by-step setup in Google Docs and Word, the heading, a complete first-page example, in-text citations, the Works Cited page and real citation examples for the sources students use most.

Every rule below was checked against the MLA Style Center and the Purdue OWL. Your instructor's directions always come first, so check the assignment sheet for anything that differs.

MLA Format Rules at a Glance

MLA format means a plain, double-spaced paper with 1-inch margins, a readable 11- to 13-point font, a four-line heading on page 1, your last name and page number at the top right of every page and a Works Cited list at the end. The table puts every setting in one place.

Two rules cause most of the confusion. Many guides say 12 point is required, but the MLA allows 11 to 13 points unless your instructor names a size. And MLA numbers every page, including the first, though some instructors want page 1 left unnumbered. The MLA explains each setting in its free guide to formatting a research project.

How to Set Up MLA Format in Google Docs and Word

You can set up MLA format in a few minutes in either program: set the margins, font and spacing, add an automatic running head and use the paragraph settings for indents. Do it before you type so every paragraph picks up the settings.

Google Docs

1. Margins. Open File > Page setup, choose Pages (headers and page numbers do not work in pageless format) and set all margins to 1 inch.
2. Font. Select everything (Ctrl+A, or Cmd+A on a Mac) and choose Times New Roman, 12 point.
3. Spacing. Open Format > Line & paragraph spacing and choose Double. If the menu offers to remove space before or after a paragraph, click it.
4. Running head. Open Insert > Page elements > Page number and pick the top-right option. Click left of the number and type your last name and a space. To adjust the header margin to 0.5 inch, click in the header and open Format > Headers & footers.
5. Indents. Press Tab to start each paragraph.
6. Works Cited. Start a new page (Insert > Break > Page break). Select your entries, open Format > Align & indent > Indentation options and choose Hanging, 0.5 inch, under Special indent.

If a menu looks different, Google's help page on headers and page numbers in Docs has the current steps, and our guide to MLA format in Google Docs has screenshots.

Microsoft Word

1. Margins. Word starts with 1-inch margins; to confirm, choose Layout > Margins > Normal.
2. Font. Press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) and set Times New Roman, 12 point.
3. Spacing. Open Home > Line and Paragraph Spacing > Line Spacing Options, choose Double and set Before and After to 0 pt.
4. Running head. Open Insert > Page Number > Top of Page, pick a plain right-hand number, then type your last name and a space before it. On the Header & Footer tab, check that Header from Top is 0.5 inch.
5. Indents. Press Tab to start each paragraph.
6. Works Cited. Select your entries, open the Home tab's Paragraph dialog box launcher > Indents and Spacing and set Special to Hanging, By 0.5 inch.

Microsoft's steps for a hanging indent in Word cover Mac and web too, and our tutorial on hanging indents in Word and Google Docs shows each click. Also set Layout > Hyphenation to None.

MLA Format Example: A Complete First Page

A correct MLA first page has no title page: the heading, title and first paragraph all start on page 1, under the running head. Here is each part, then a full MLA format example.

The MLA Heading

The MLA heading is four double-spaced lines that start one inch from the top of page 1, flush with the left margin:

1. your full name
2. your instructor's name
3. the course name and number
4. the date

Day-month-year order, as in 10 October 2026, matches MLA's Works Cited dates and needs no commas. The MLA says the month may be spelled out or abbreviated, so ask your instructor, and if no one says which date to use, give the date you finished. For a group project, MLA calls for a title page listing every author instead.

The Title

Center your title on the line after the date, in title case, with no bold, italics, underlining, quotation marks, all capitals or final period. Only titles of other works inside it get italics or quotation marks, as in Human Weariness in "After Apple Picking" and Concepts of Justice in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Running Head

The running head is your last name, one space and the page number, half an inch from the top and flush right, for example Ellis 1. Do not add "p.", a hyphen or a period. If a group's surnames will not fit, use the page number alone.

Full First-Page MLA Format Example

In the real document, "Ellis 1" sits in the header at the top right, the title is centered and everything is double-spaced. The paragraph shows three in-text citations: an author named in the sentence, a source with no author and a web source with no page numbers.

Ellis 1

Jordan Ellis

Professor Ramirez

English 102

10 October 2026

Typing, Reading and Remembering in the Digital Classroom

Most college reading and note-taking now happens on screens, but convenience is not the same as learning. Naomi Baron argues that reading is "just half of literacy. The other half is writing" (194), which suggests that what students write about a text matters as much as the reading itself. Research on note-taking points the same way. In studies reported by NPR, students who typed lecture notes on laptops did worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes by hand ("Attention, Students"). Even the tools students use to format sources need a human check: a writer for the MLA Style Center found generated citations with missing punctuation, two dates run together and elements the MLA dropped years ago (Wallace).

All three sources appear on the sample Works Cited page below, so you can match each citation to its entry.

MLA In-Text Citations

MLA in-text citations give the author's last name and the page number, either together in parentheses, as in (Baron 194), or with the name in your sentence and only the page in parentheses. This author-page system points readers to the matching Works Cited entry, so each citation starts with whatever comes first in that entry: the author's name or, when there is no author, the title.

A few rules apply to every in-text citation:

• Put the citation at the end of the clause or sentence, before the period. There is no comma between the name and the page, and no "p." or "pg."
• With no page numbers, give the name only. Do not use print-preview page numbers or count paragraphs yourself.
• For video and audio, give the time stamp of the part you use.
• Paraphrases and summaries need citations too. See our guide to paraphrasing without plagiarizing.

The MLA's overview of in-text citations has more examples.

Block Quotations

Use a block quotation when prose runs more than four lines in your paper, or verse more than three. Start it on a new line, indent the whole passage half an inch, keep it double-spaced and drop the quotation marks. Introduce it with your own sentence, usually ending in a colon, and put the citation after the final punctuation mark.

Quoting Poetry, Plays and Dialogue

In a short verse quotation, mark line breaks with a spaced slash ( / ) and stanza breaks with a double slash ( // ), and cite line numbers instead of pages. For dialogue set off from your text, start each speaker's lines with the name in capitals and a period, indented half an inch. Put added words in square brackets and mark cuts with a spaced ellipsis ( . . . ). The Purdue OWL page on formatting quotations in MLA has longer worked examples.

How to Format the Works Cited Page

The Works Cited page is the full list of the sources you cited, on a new page at the end of your paper after any endnotes. Format it like this:

• Center the title Works Cited in plain text (Work Cited if there is one source).
• Keep the same margins and running head as the rest of the paper.
• Double-space the whole list, with no extra blank line between entries.
• Start each entry flush left and indent every following line half an inch (a hanging indent).
• Alphabetize by the first word of each entry, usually the author's last name. Ignore A, An and The at the start of a title.
• For several works by one author, give the name once, then use three hyphens and a period (---.) in later entries, ordered by title.

An annotated bibliography uses the same entry format with a short note under each entry; see our annotated bibliography format guide for MLA examples.

Sample Works Cited Page

Here is the Works Cited page for the sample above. In the real paper the title is centered and each entry has a hanging indent.

Works Cited

"Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away." NPR, 17 Apr. 2016, www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away.

Baron, Naomi S. "Redefining Reading: The Impact of Digital Communication Media." PMLA, vol. 128, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 193-200, https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2013.128.1.193.

Wallace, Joseph. "Citation Generators and MLA Style." MLA Style Center, Modern Language Association of America, 8 Nov. 2023, style.mla.org/citation-generators-and-mla-style/.

The NPR article has only a staff byline, so its entry starts with the title and is alphabetized under A. The journal article ends with a DOI, and the web article names its publisher because it differs from the site name.

How to Build an MLA Citation from the Core Elements

Every MLA citation in a Works Cited list is built from the same nine core elements in the same order, so you can cite almost any source by filling in the elements that apply and skipping the rest. The author and the title of the source each end with a period, the elements after them are separated by commas, and the entry ends with a period. The examples come from entries in this guide.

A few conventions apply inside the elements:

• Authors: invert only the first name listed (Last, First). For two authors, write Last, First, and First Last. For three or more, give the first author followed by et al.
• Titles: use title case. Italicize works that stand on their own, such as books, films and websites. Put works that sit inside something larger, such as articles, chapters, poems and web pages, in quotation marks.
• Publishers: leave the publisher out for journals, magazines, newspapers and websites whose name matches the publisher. Shorten University Press to UP, as in Oxford UP.
• Dates: write them day-month-year and abbreviate months longer than four letters: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.
• Pages: use p. for one page and pp. for a range. Above 99, shorten the second number to its last two digits unless more are needed, so pp. 225-50 but pp. 193-200.

Containers and Second Containers

A container is the larger work that holds your source: a journal holds an article, an anthology holds a short story, a website holds a page and a streaming service holds an episode. When you reach a source through a second container, such as a print journal article you read in a database, add the second container's title and location after the first:

Goldman, Anne. "Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante." The Georgia Review, vol. 64, no. 1, 2010, pp. 69-88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41403188.

Here The Georgia Review is the first container and JSTOR is the second. The MLA's free interactive practice template lets you type each element into its slot and builds the entry as you go.

DOIs, URLs and Access Dates

For online sources, the location is a DOI if one exists, then a permalink, then a URL. Write a DOI as a full link beginning https://doi.org/. For ordinary URLs you can usually leave off http:// or https://, though some instructors want clickable links. Access dates are a supplemental element in MLA 9: add one at the end of the entry, as in Accessed 10 Oct. 2026, when a page has no publication date or is likely to change.

MLA Citation Examples for Common Sources

The MLA citation examples below are real sources, checked against the MLA Style Center, the Purdue OWL or the publisher's own record. Each row pairs a Works Cited entry with a matching in-text citation. Page numbers in the in-text column show the format only.

Books and Anthologies

Leave out the city of publication for modern books; MLA keeps it only for special cases such as books published before 1900. A first edition needs no edition label, so add one only for a later edition such as 3rd ed.

Journal, News and Web Articles

For articles, use the sample Works Cited page above as your model: Baron shows a journal article with a DOI, the NPR entry shows a news article with no personal author and Wallace shows a web article with an author and a separate publisher. For an article found in a database, add the database as a second container, as in the JSTOR example.

Videos, Films, Art, AI and Social Media

• Videos: if the creator is unclear, start with the title and add the uploader after the container: YouTube, uploaded by Account Name.
• Films: start with the title, or with a person and role (Anderson, Wes, director.) if your paper focuses on that person.
• Posts on X: use X as the container even for old Twitter posts, and copy the URL exactly.
• Generative AI: do not list the tool as the author. Describe the prompt as the title, put the model in the version slot and link to a shareable copy of the chat if possible. If the AI names sources, read and cite the originals. See the MLA's updated AI guidance, and check your course policy before using AI at all.

Headings, Lists, Tables and Figures in MLA

MLA 9 allows section headings, lists, tables and figures in student papers, and each one has a simple format:

• Section headings: short essays rarely need them. Keep them short, flush left, in title case and without a period, with bold for main headings and italics for subheadings. Each level needs at least two headings, and MLA advises against numbering them unless your field does.
• Lists: work short lists into your sentence, numbering items in parentheses: (1), (2), (3). Set long ones vertically; bulleted fragments start lowercase with no end punctuation.
• Tables: above the table, put the label (Table 1) flush left and a title on the next line. Below it, give the source and notes, marking notes with lowercase letters.
• Figures: photos, charts and maps get a label (Fig. 1) and caption directly below.
• Captions: a caption with full source details, for a source cited nowhere else, needs no Works Cited entry.

Common MLA Format Mistakes and Outdated Rules

Most points lost on MLA papers come from a short list of habits, many carried over from older editions or other styles. Check your draft against this table before you submit.

What Changed in the MLA 9th Edition

The MLA 9th edition, released in April 2021, kept the core-elements system from the 8th edition and added detail rather than new rules:

• Formatting guidance for research papers returned to the handbook, with expanded advice on tables, figures and lists.
• A new chapter covers inclusive language.
• Each core element got fuller explanations and more examples, and optional elements were renamed supplemental elements.
• In-text citation guidance grew, including how to shorten titles and how to tell apart works with the same author and title.
• DOIs are written as full https://doi.org/ links instead of with the older "doi:" prefix.

Fixing Citation Generator Output

Citation generators are only as good as their data. When the MLA tested one university library catalog's "MLA" button, it got this 7th-edition entry:

Fitzgerald, F S. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Print.

The corrected MLA 9 version restores the middle name and the period after the F and drops the city and the medium:

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995.

Treat any generated entry as a draft and check it against the rules above, as the MLA advises in its post on citation generators and MLA style.

Your campus writing center and your instructor are the best first stops for formatting questions. If you want a tutor to go through your paper's MLA formatting and explain each fix, Ace My Homework's academic writing help connects you with writing tutors: you share your draft and instructions, compare bids and tutor profiles and can chat before choosing. Use their notes to correct your own paper and follow your school's academic integrity policy. You can ask a tutor to review your MLA formatting here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Font Size Is Required for MLA Format?

MLA does not require one exact size. Its formatting guidance asks for an easily readable typeface, such as Times New Roman, set anywhere from 11 to 13 points, with italics that look clearly different from regular type. Twelve point is the most common choice and a safe default. If your instructor or assignment sheet names a font or size, follow it, and use the same font throughout the paper, including the Works Cited page.

Does MLA Format Need a Title Page?

No. A standard MLA paper starts with a four-line heading at the top left of page 1 (your name, your instructor's name, the course and the date), followed by a centered title. MLA calls for a title page only when the paper is a group project, in which case every author is listed on it, or when your instructor asks for one. In that case, format the title page the way your instructor describes.

How Do You Cite a Website with No Author in MLA?

Start the Works Cited entry with the page title in quotation marks, then give the website name in italics, the date and the URL, and alphabetize the entry by the first main word of the title. In your text, use a shortened title in place of the author, such as ("Attention, Students"). If an organization wrote the page and also runs the site, start with the title instead of repeating the organization's name.

Do You Need an Access Date in MLA 9?

Usually not. Access dates are a supplemental element in MLA 9, so you add one only when it helps readers. Include it when an online source has no publication date or is likely to change or disappear, because it shows which version you saw. Put it at the end of the entry in the form Accessed 10 Oct. 2026. Follow your instructor if they want access dates for every online source.

How Do You Cite ChatGPT in MLA Format?

Do not list ChatGPT as the author. Describe your prompt in the title position, italicize ChatGPT as the container, then give the model (such as model GPT-4o), OpenAI as the publisher, the date the response was generated and a shareable link to the chat. In the text, cite the first words of your description, such as ("Describe the theme"). Our guide on citing AI and ChatGPT shows full examples.

What Is the Difference Between MLA and APA Format?

MLA, used in English and the humanities, cites the author and page, as in (Baron 194), and lists sources on a Works Cited page. APA, common in psychology, education and the social sciences, cites the author and year, as in (Baron, 2013), and calls its list References. An APA student paper also opens with a title page instead of a first-page heading. Our APA style guide covers the details.