Works Cited Notes

Your Works Cited List

The works cited list should appear at the end of your essay. It provides the information necessary for a reader to locate and be able to read any sources you cite in the essay. Each source you cite in the essay must appear in your works-cited list; likewise, each entry in the works-cited list must be cited in your text. Preparing your works cited list using MLA style is covered in chapter six of the MLA Style Manual, and chapter four of the Handbook for Writing Research Papers. Here are some guidelines for preparing your works cited list.

List Format

• Begin your works cited list on a separate page from the text of the essay under the label Works Cited (with no quotation marks, underlining, etc.), which should be centered at the top of the page.
• Make the first line of each entry in your list flush left with the margin. Subsequent lines in each entry should be indented one-half inch. This is known as a hanging indent.
• Double space all entries, with no skipped spaces between entries.
• Keep in mind that underlining and italics are equivalent; you should select one or the other to use throughout your essay.
• Alphabetize the list of works cited by the first word in each entry (usually the author's last name),

Basic Rules for Citations

• Authors' names are inverted (last name first); if a work has more than one author, invert only the first author's name, follow it with a comma, then continue listing the rest of the authors.
• If you have cited more than one work by a particular author, order them alphabetically by title, and use three hyphens in place of the author's name for every entry after the first.
• When an author appears both as the sole author of a text and as the first author of a group, list solo-author entries first.
• If no author is given for a particular work, alphabetize by the title of the piece and use a shortened version of the title for parenthetical citations.
• Capitalize each word in the titles of articles, books, etc. This rule does not apply to articles, short prepositions, or conjunctions unless one is the first word of the title or subtitle.
• Underline or italicize titles of books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and films.
• Use quotation marks around the titles of articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Also use quotation marks for the titles of short stories, book chapters, poems, and songs.
• List page numbers efficiently, when needed. If you refer to a journal article that appeared on pages 225 through 250, list the page numbers on your Works Cited page as 225-50.
• If you're citing an article or a publication that was originally issued in print form but that you retrieved from an online database, you should provide enough information so that the reader can locate the article either in its original print form or retrieve it from the online database (if they have access). For more about this, see our discussion of electronic sources.

Books

Author(s). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.

Book with one author

Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. Denver: MacMurray, 1999