MLA 9th edition
How to cite a report in MLA 9th edition
Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
THE FORMAT
A report in MLA, at a glance
Author Last, First. Title of the Report. Publishing Organization, Year, url.example.org/report.
Adeyemi, Tunde, and Claire Renaud. Writing Support in Doctoral Programs: A National Survey. National Center for Writing Research, 2023, ncwr.org/reports/2023-04.
(Adeyemi and Renaud 12)
In prose: Adeyemi and Renaud surveyed 214 doctoral programs and found writing support unevenly funded (12).
Writing Support in Doctoral Programs: A National Survey. National Center for Writing Research, 2023, ncwr.org/reports/2023-04.
In text: (Writing Support 12)
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 report
Elements to collect
- Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named
- Year of publication
- Full title of the report
- Report or publication number, when there is one
- Publisher, when it differs from the author
- URL
Rules specific to this entry
- A report is a standalone work, so its title is italicized rather than quoted, even when it lives on an organization’s website.
- When an organization is both the author and the publisher, MLA has you leave the author slot empty, start with the title, and name the organization once as publisher. The entry then alphabetizes by title.
- MLA provides no dedicated slot for a report number. Add it as a supplementary detail at the end — Report no. NCWR-2023-04. — so a reader can find the exact edition.
- Because most reports are paginated, the parenthetical takes a page number like any book. Undated reports take an access date at the end instead of a year.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element MLA needs for a report: Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named; Year of publication; Full title of the report; Report or publication number, when there is one.
Build the works cited entry
Arrange those details in the MLA order: Author Last, First. Title of the Report. Publishing Organization, Year, url.example.org/report.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Adeyemi and Renaud 12) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Adeyemi and Renaud surveyed 214 doctoral programs and found writing support unevenly funded (12)..
Check it against the exceptions
A report is a standalone work, so its title is italicized rather than quoted, even when it lives on an organization’s website.
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 report in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about MLA and reports
What if the report 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 report?
Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named, Year of publication, Full title of the report, and the rest of the elements listed above. Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
Is there anything unusual about a report in MLA?
A report is a standalone work, so its title is italicized rather than quoted, even when it lives on an organization’s website.
What else catches people out here?
When an organization is both the author and the publisher, MLA has you leave the author slot empty, start with the title, and name the organization once as publisher. The entry then alphabetizes by title.
Can I reformat this report 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.
