MLA 9th edition references and in-text citations from a DOI, ISBN, URL or title, with the rules explained. Export the list to Word.
Let’s cite!
Paste a DOI, ISBN, PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or just a title. Your list is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.
Formatted by citeproc-js © Frank Bennett, unmodified, under the CPAL — citeproc-js implements the Citation Style Language. Styles from the CSL project, CC BY-SA 3.0 (our copies).
Paste a DOI, an ISBN, a link or a title and the tool finds the publisher's own record for it and formats it in MLA 9th edition — the author–page system used in English, literature, modern languages, cultural and media studies. The works cited entry and the in-text citation come together, and the rules are those of the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021), published by the Modern Language Association. The 9th edition appeared in April 2021, refining rather than replacing the container system introduced in the 8th.
The MLA Style Center at style.mla.org publishes worked examples and answers to specific cases free of charge.
Three steps, about twenty seconds a source.
A DOI, an ISBN, a PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or a title. MLA is already selected on this page. The tool works out what you pasted and asks the right catalogue — Crossref, OpenLibrary, PubMed, DataCite or Semantic Scholar — for the record.
Each source gets a card showing what the catalogue held and what the tool changed to fit MLA: a DOI reduced to its bare form, a page range tidied. Every change can be undone with one click if the record was right as it was.
Copy the list with its formatting into Word or Google Docs, or download a .docx with the hanging indent and spacing already set. BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON exports carry the same data into Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or LaTeX.
The rules the tool applies, from the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021).
Six real sources — two journal articles, a book, a chapter, a web page and a conference paper — formatted by the same engine that runs the generator above. Nothing here was typed by hand, so what you see is what you get.
AI Writing Assistant. “Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It.” AI Writing Assistant, https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026.
In text: (AI Writing Assistant)
Golder, Scott A., and Michael W. Macy. “Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures.” Science, vol. 333, no. 6051, Sept. 2011, pp. 1878–81, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1202775.
In text, citing page 1880: (Golder and Macy 1880)
Grice, H. Paul. “Logic and Conversation.” Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, Academic Press, 1975, pp. 41–58.
In text, citing page 45: (Grice 45)
Kahneman, Daniel, et al. “Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, 1991, pp. 193–206, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193.
In text: (Kahneman et al.)
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2012.
In text, citing page 12: (Kuhn 12)
Vaswani, Ashish, et al. “Attention Is All You Need.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30, 2017, pp. 5998–6008.
In text: (Vaswani et al.)
Five errors markers see most often, and what the tool does about each.
(Kuhn 2012, 12) is Chicago. MLA cites by page alone: (Kuhn 12). The year belongs in the Works Cited entry.
MLA writes the bare number in the text, and pp. only in the Works Cited entry: (Grice 45) but pp. 41–58 in the list.
The 9th edition shortens a range to the digits that change: 1878–81, not 1878–1881. The tool applies the rule for you.
MLA keeps title case: every principal word capitalised, in the title and the container alike.
An article has a journal, a chapter has a book, a web page has a site. The container is italic and follows the title of the source; without it the entry cannot be found.
If your handbook names one of these instead, its page opens the generator with that style selected.
Chicago notes and bibliography is the other humanities standard. It puts the citation in a footnote instead of parentheses and gives the year in the bibliography entry; the title-case conventions are much the same. Open the Chicago page.
APA cites by year, MLA by page. If your reader needs to know when a source was published as they read, the course is probably APA; if they need to find the passage, MLA. Open the APA page.
Yes. Every style, every source type and every export is free, with no account and no daily allowance, because the formatting runs in your browser rather than on our servers. Your list is saved in this browser and never sent to us.
The 9th edition (2021). It keeps the 8th edition's container system and its core elements list, so an 8th-edition entry looks almost the same; the main changes are in the handbook's guidance on inclusive language and on formatting the paper.
The author's surname and the page number, with nothing between them — no comma, no year, no p.: (Kuhn 12). The tool prints the in-text form under each reference; turn on the in-text switch above the list if it is hidden.
Paste the address and the tool reads the page's title, author, site name and date where the page declares them, then formats it. The MLA form of a web page with an organisation as author and no date is: AI Writing Assistant. “Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It.” AI Writing Assistant, https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html. Accessed 18 Sept. 2026. Check the author and date on the card — pages often leave them out, and the style has a rule for each case.
Yes. Your sources are stored as data, not as formatted text, so choosing another style in the picker re-formats the whole list at once — APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, or any of the 10,000 Citation Style Language styles the picker searches.
From the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021), published by the Modern Language Association, as encoded in the open Citation Style Language style the tool uses. The MLA Style Center at style.mla.org publishes worked examples and answers to specific cases free of charge. Where your department's own guide differs on a detail, the department's guide is the one your marker reads.
Check the essay's grammar, tighten the wording, or summarise a source before you cite it. One plan covers every tool.
Each page opens the generator with that style already selected, shows what the tool prints for six real sources, and explains the style's rules. The picker above the list reaches more than 10,000 styles in all.
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