RD/IRW 115 Information Literacy Project: Cite Your Sources
Cite Your Sources in MLA
Why cite your sources?
Resources for creating MLA-style citations:
- MLA Formatting and Style guide
- MLA 8 reference guide (pdf)
- MLA 9 citation samples (pdf)
- Citing AI in MLA format (NOTE: Make sure you've fact-checked any assertions the AI text is making and verified any sources that it references. AI tools do not always share accurate information or viable sources.)
Free citation creation tools to help you generate MLA-style citations:
- MyBib
- Generate citations and bibliographies by pasting a URL or searching for a resource by title
- Covers MLA 8 & 9
- Copy and paste citations, download them as a Word doc, save them to Google Drive, print, or email them to yourself
- NCSU Citation Builder
- Simple citation builder for some digital and print materials
- Covers MLA 8 & 9
- Copy and paste your generated citation into your bibliography
- Calvin College's Knight Cite
- Build citations for a wide range of resources in print, digital, multimedia, and communication
- Covers MLA 9
- Create a free Knight Cite account to save citations and export them to Word or RTF document
Need help with hanging indentation?
- Here is a link to a short video tutorial for hanging indentation formatting in Word.
- Here is a link to a short video tutorial for hanging indentation formatting in Google Drive/Docs
Test Your Knowledge: Avoiding Plagiarism
This quick quiz from the Ithaca College Library will test your knowledge and help you learn how to properly cite sources.
Generate citations at the click of a button
The library catalog and some library databases have built-in citation generators, which allow you to simply click on a "Cite" button to get the citation for that article or book in various formats. You can usually find this useful feature, if it is available, on the page for the specific article or book. Always double-check the citations from citation generators, as these automated tools are known to occasionally produce errors (for example, formatting the author's name or title in all capital letters).
In the EBSCO databases, the "Cite" tool is located in the "Tools" menu, to the right of a full article record:
In our Library Catalog, the "citation" tool is located in the "Send to" area below the title, author, and location information in a full item record:
Citation buttons are also available in ProQuest databases, SIRS, CQ Researcher, Google Scholar, and most Gale Databases. If you're not sure how to find the citation, ask a librarian.