What is MLA style?
MLA style is the editorial and citation system maintained by the Modern Language Association, laid out in the MLA Handbook. Humanities students, scholars and editors use it for essays, journal articles and books in literary and cultural fields. For example, MLA uses parenthetical in-text citations with author and page number, such as (Morrison 42), paired with a Works Cited list at the end of the document.
Why does MLA style matter?
MLA matters because it is the default scholarly style across most humanities programs in the United States, so anyone publishing literary or cultural research will likely encounter it. Its citation system is designed for sources where the author and page number do the work of locating a passage, which suits close reading and textual analysis. Adopting MLA consistently across a publication, thesis or anthology keeps references easy to follow and easy to check.
Examples of MLA style
In-text citations — Parenthetical references show author and page, so a quoted passage ends with "(Morrison 42)" before the sentence period.
Works Cited — Entries follow a nine-element core template: author, title of source, title of container, contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date and location.
Titles — Italicize longer works such as books and journals ("Beloved"), and put shorter works such as articles or short stories in quotation marks ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find").
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