Citation Style: MLA: Welcome

What is MLA Style?

Modern Language Association (MLA) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite information sources within liberal arts and the humanities.

MLA style covers not only the format of your citations, but also the format of your research papers. Paper format covers such things as double spacing, margins, and page numbering. This LibGuide will point you to websites that will help you with formatting your papers and your citations.

The definitive publication for MLA style is the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook. You can find this book at Lightner Library, Ref LB2369 .M52 2021.     

Benefits of using MLA Style:

• Provide your readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently and to locate information of interest to them.

• Allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with unfamiliar or complicated formatting.

• Establish your credibility in the field by demonstrating an awareness of your audience and their needs as fellow researchers (particularly concerning the citing of references). (Source: Purdue OWL)

The Order of Sections in Your MLA Paper

The sections of your paper will follow a defined order: Header, Main Body, Works Cited. For each section, see the corresponding tab at the top of the page for the rules to follow for proper MLA formatting.

What is a Citation?

If you are new to the concept of citing your sources, we recommend watching this video to learn a little bit more about style guides and how they help you to avoid plagiarism.

This video was created by the North Carolina State University Library and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.