MLA 9 Works Cited page: the layout rules, entry by entry

The Works Cited page is where MLA papers most often lose marks, and almost never because a source is wrong. They lose marks on layout: the list runs on from the last paragraph instead of starting a new page, the heading is bold, the entries are not indented, or the order is not alphabetical. All of that is mechanical, and the free MLA format checker reports each item.

The page

• Its own page. Insert a page break before the heading. The list starts at the top of a fresh page even when the essay ends three lines down the previous one.
• The heading is "Works Cited", centred, in the same plain 12-point type as everything else. Not bold, not underlined, not larger, not "Bibliography" or "References" (those belong to Chicago and APA).
• Double-spaced throughout, with no extra space between entries. The hanging indent is what separates them visually.
• Hanging indent of half an inch on every entry: the first line flush left, every following line indented. In Word this is a paragraph setting, not spaces or tabs.
• Alphabetical order by the first element of each entry, which is usually the author's surname. A work with no author is alphabetised by its title, ignoring "A", "An" and "The".
• The running head continues on this page: your surname and the page number, top right.

The entry

MLA 9 builds every entry from the same list of core elements, in this order, each followed by the punctuation shown:

Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.

Not every source has every element; you skip the ones that do not apply. The pieces that matter most for formatting:

• Author as Surname, First Name. Two authors: "Okafor, Ada, and Ben Lin." Three or more: "Okafor, Ada, et al."
• Title of a whole work (book, film, website) in italics. Title of a part (article, chapter, poem, web page) in quotation marks.
• The container is the larger work the source sits inside: the journal for an article, the website for a page, the anthology for a poem. It is italicised.
• Dates in day month year order: 15 Sept. 2026, with months longer than four letters abbreviated.
• Location: page range for print (pp. 45–62), a DOI or URL for online sources, without "https://" in front of a DOI.

Two examples, exactly as they should appear:

Okafor, Ada. The Long Field. Riverhead, 2024.

Lin, Ben. "Reading the Margins." Journal of Composition Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2023, pp. 115–34.

Matching the text to the list

MLA in-text citations are author and page in parentheses, with no comma: (Okafor 23). Two authors: (Okafor and Lin 23). Three or more: (Okafor et al. 23). If the sentence already names the author, the parentheses carry only the page number.

Two rules connect the text and the list, and markers check both:

• Every citation must point to an entry. A name cited in the text with no entry on the Works Cited page is the most common citation error there is.
• Every entry must be cited. A source listed but never used in the text does not belong on the page; MLA is a list of works cited, not works consulted.

The formatter puts the list on its own page, centres and un-bolds the heading, applies the hanging indent and double spacing to every entry, and sorts the list alphabetically when every entry parses. The checker cross-references the citations against the entries and reports any that do not match, in both directions. Start with the MLA paper formatter.