Media Studies

Referencing

MLA referencing style tools and tips. Learn to reference your sources with confidence.

MLA 9 - Examples

Below are examples of MLA 9 referencing which you would list alphabetically in your Works Cited list. Note the indent on the second line and each subsequent line. The Purdue OWL MLA 9 Style Guide is a comprehensive resource.

Book - single author

Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. Publisher, Year.

Mennel, Barbara. Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys. Columbia University Press, 2012. 

Book - two or more authors

Lastname, Firstname, and Firstname Lastname. Title of Book. Publisher, Year.

Chapter from edited book

AuthorLastname, AuthorFirstname. "Title of Chapter." Title of Book, edited by Firstname Lastname, Publisher, Year, pp.X-X.

Abbott, Stacey. "Taking Back the Night: Dracula's Daughter in New York." Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and

Television, edited by Leon Hunt, Sharon Lockyer, and Milly Williamson, I.B. Tauris, 2019, pp. 38-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780755698646.ch-002

Academic article

Lastname, Firstname. "Title of Article." Title of Journal, vol. X, no. X, Year, pp. X-X

Donelan, Carol. "Vampires Suck! Twihards Rule!!! Myth and Meaning in the Twilight Saga Franchise." Quarterly Review of Film and Video,

vol. 32, no. 3, 2015, pp. 240-250, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2013.811353.

Works Cited vs Bibliography

MLA 9 uses a Works Cited list which is an alphabetical list of all the sources you specifically called out in your assignment. A Works Cited list belongs at the end of your assignment under the header Works Cited. A Reference List (or References) is a very similar term used when using APA to format your references.

A bibliography is different in that you can list all sources you consulted even if you do not directly call them out in your assignment. 

The terms referencing and citing are often used interchangeably but do mean different things. The citation is the acknowledgment of the source in the text (your assignment) that points your reader to the reference. The reference provides the information a reader would require to track down that source.

Zotero

Zotero is a free (storage restrictions), open source reference manager. You can store your assignment references and generate Works Cited lists automatically*. You can store or link your PDFs and read, edit, annotate PDFs in Zotero. 

*some editing likely needed