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Welcome to the WSU Libraries' MLA Quick Cite guide. This guide should help you with basic MLA (eighth edition) citations, but won't cover all types of sources that you may find and use. If you have questions about citing sources, please contact a librarian or try using some of the resources listed below.
This guide refers to the 8th edition. Updates and changes that reflect the 9th edition should be in place for Fall 2021.
The current MLA Handbook has moved away from specific, fixed rules for different formats (print book, CD, web page, online article, etc.), toward a more flexible system that takes into account the various ways works are published and used. The handbook emphasizes key elements that work across multiple formats. While not every element is used for every source, the elements should appear in this order:
MLA Handbook by The Modern Language Association, the authority on research and writing, takes a fresh look at documenting sources in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. Works are published today in a dizzying range of formats. A book, for example, may be read in print, online, or as an e-book--or perhaps listened to in an audio version. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. Previous editions of the MLA Handbookprovided separate instructions for each format, and additional instructions were required for new formats. In this groundbreaking new edition of its best-selling handbook, the MLA recommends instead one universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any type of source. Shorter and redesigned for easy use, the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook guides writers through the principles behind evaluating sources for their research. It then shows them how to cite sources in their writing and create useful entries for the works-cited list. More than just a new edition, this is a new MLA style.