MLA 9th edition
How to cite a chapter in an edited book in MLA 9th edition
A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
THE FORMAT
A chapter in an edited book in MLA, at a glance
Author Last, First. “Title of the Chapter.” Title of the Book, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. xx–xx.
Ibarra, Sofía. “Hedging as a Politeness Strategy in Research Articles.” Rethinking Peer Review, edited by Lucia R. Marchetti and Kwame Owusu, Fenmore UP, 2020, pp. 112–34.
(Ibarra 119)
In prose: Ibarra reads the hedge as a concession to reviewers rather than a mark of doubt (119).
Owusu, Kwame. Introduction. Rethinking Peer Review, edited by Lucia R. Marchetti and Owusu, Fenmore UP, 2020, pp. 1–9.
In text: (Owusu 4)
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the works cited builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What MLA needs from a chapter in an edited book
Elements to collect
- Chapter author or authors
- Year of publication
- Chapter title
- Editor or editors of the whole book
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Rules specific to this entry
- This is the container model at its clearest: the chapter is the source, the edited book is the container. Quotation marks for the part, italics for the whole.
- Editors appear in the other-contributors slot as “edited by”, lowercase and spelled out, with their names in normal order. Only the chapter author at the head of the entry is inverted.
- The chapter’s page range closes the entry with pp., and the second number is shortened: pp. 112–34.
- Cite the chapter author in the text. If you also cite a different chapter from the same book, give each one its own full entry rather than pointing at the volume.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element MLA needs for a chapter in an edited book: Chapter author or authors; Year of publication; Chapter title; Editor or editors of the whole book.
Build the works cited entry
Arrange those details in the MLA order: Author Last, First. “Title of the Chapter.” Title of the Book, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. xx–xx.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Ibarra 119) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Ibarra reads the hedge as a concession to reviewers rather than a mark of doubt (119)..
Check it against the exceptions
This is the container model at its clearest: the chapter is the source, the edited book is the container. Quotation marks for the part, italics for the whole.
MLA RULES
The conventions behind every MLA entry
MLA Handbook (9th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the works cited is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the works cited is sorted, and where MLA entries most often go wrong — are collected on the MLA 9th edition guide.
The same chapter in an edited book in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about MLA and book chapters
What if the chapter in an edited book has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a chapter in an edited book?
Chapter author or authors, Year of publication, Chapter title, and the rest of the elements listed above. A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
Is there anything unusual about a chapter in an edited book in MLA?
This is the container model at its clearest: the chapter is the source, the edited book is the container. Quotation marks for the part, italics for the whole.
What else catches people out here?
Editors appear in the other-contributors slot as “edited by”, lowercase and spelled out, with their names in normal order. Only the chapter author at the head of the entry is inverted.
Can I reformat this chapter in an edited book in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole works cited at once.
