Glossary

The MLA Works Cited page, and how it locks to your in-text citations

MLA calls its end-of-paper source list the Works Cited page, and it holds only the sources you actually cited. Every in-text citation must have a matching entry, and every entry must be pointed to by at least one citation — the two lists lock together with nothing left over.

Why it matters when you are writing

Since its eighth edition, MLA has stopped publishing a separate template for every kind of source. Instead you assemble each entry from nine core elements in a fixed order: author, title of source, title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, and location. A journal article and a podcast episode look different on the page because different elements apply, not because you looked up two different recipes.

“Container” is the concept that trips people up. The container is the larger work holding the source — the journal that holds an article, the anthology that holds an essay, the streaming service that holds an episode. Some sources sit inside two containers, and MLA handles that by letting you list the second after the first, which is why a database-hosted article ends with the database name and the DOI.

Before you submit, run the two-way check in both directions. Every parenthetical citation should find an entry that begins with the same word — the “first element” — because that word is what your reader scans for. Entries that no citation reaches do not belong on a Works Cited page at all; move them to a bibliography if your instructor wants one.

IN PRACTICE

A journal article entry, MLA 9

Okonkwo, Adaeze, and Luis Reyes. “Framing Uncertainty in Policy Texts.” Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol. 42, no. 3, 2021, pp. 44–61. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1234/jal.2021.0423.

OFTEN CONFUSED WITH

What Works Cited is not

Bibliography: A bibliography can include background reading you never cited; a Works Cited page cannot.
Works Consulted: Works Consulted is the optional MLA list for sources that informed you without being cited — it sits separately, and only if your instructor asks for it.

Questions about works cited

Is Works Cited the same as a reference list?

Functionally yes — both contain only cited sources. The names and formatting differ: MLA says Works Cited and uses author–page in-text citations, APA says References and uses author–date.

Do I include the URL?

MLA asks for a DOI when one exists, and otherwise a stable URL, conventionally without the “https://” prefix. Prefer the DOI: it is the address that will still work in five years.

What if a source has more than two authors?

Name the first author, inverted, then “et al.” The in-text citation uses the same shortened form, so the two still match on the first element.

Does the Works Cited page start on its own page?

Yes. It begins on a new page, with the heading “Works Cited” centered, the same double spacing as the rest of the paper, and a hanging indent on every entry.

Related terms

Bibliography

A bibliography lists, alphabetically at the end of a paper, every source you consulted — whether or not each one is cited in the text.

In-text citation

Every borrowed idea in a paper carries an in-text citation: a brief marker — usually an author name plus a year, page, or number — that points to the full entry in your reference list.

Citation style

Every citation style — APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Vancouver, Harvard — is a published rulebook governing how you signal a source in the text and format it in the reference list: punctuation, author order, italics, date placement.

Et al.

“Et al.” abbreviates the Latin et alii, meaning “and others.” It stands in for co-authors you have chosen not to name in an in-text citation once a source passes a set number of authors.

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