What is the 'container' system in MLA?

A container is the larger work a source sits inside — a journal, an anthology, a website, a streaming platform. You list the source, then each nested container in turn, which lets one template cover almost any source type.

Does MLA use footnotes?

MLA keeps citations in-text and reserves notes for genuine commentary or bibliographic asides, not for standard source references.

MLA (9th edition)

Author–page referencing standard in English, literature, and the humanities.

Typically used inEnglish and literature, languages, cultural studies, and the humanities.

Get a paper formatted in MLA

Key rules

The rules that actually get marked.

These are the distinctive rules for MLA (9th edition). Edge cases vary by edition and institution, so confirm anything unusual against your department's guide.

In-text citations use author surname and page number with no comma: (Smith 14).
The reference list is titled 'Works Cited' and uses a hanging indent, alphabetised by author.
Entries follow the MLA 9 'container' model: author, title, container, contributors, version, number, publisher, date, location.
Titles use headline capitalisation; book and journal titles are italicised, article and chapter titles take quotation marks.
Cite the medium through the container rather than a separate format label.

Questions

MLA, clarified.

Need your paper in MLA?

We format in-text citations and the reference list to your required style, edition, and edition-specific quirks.

Start your order