Generate Citations Automatically in MLA

MLA Book Citation Examples for Various Book Types

The 8th edition of Modern Language Association citation format (MLA) matches in popularity the American Psychological Association edition six format but is used mostly in humanities and arts for such subjects like English, Poetry, Literature. Both are very popular, but while APA has an author-date format for in-text citations, MLA adopts the author-page format.

Rules and Examples of MLA Book Citation Formatting

The typical MLA book citation format (8th edition) is as follows:

In-text citation:

Example of a print book with one author

In fact, more details can be included into a book MLA citation. It depends mostly on source type such as title, other contributors (e.g. editors), version, number, URL, access date (for online sources), etc. When considering how to cite an ebook MLA 8, for instance, or other types of books, one should learn the order and formatting rules these elements follow. Some typical MLA book citation format examples are provided below.

Format & Examples of In-Text MLA Citations and Other Formatting Rules

Not only bibliographic entries have a different format depending on author number – this is also true about any MLA in text citation book types of various kind. Here is the MLA book citation format for in-text citations, as a function of author number indicated in a source:

• one author:

• two authors:

• three or more authors:

• no author – in this case, first words from a book title are used:

Short and long quotations are treated differently in MLA – the threshold to distinguish these two are four lines of prose or three lines of verse. Anything below this limit would be embedded in the sentence and enclosed within double quotation marks. Everything exceeding this length would be placed in a separate paragraph/ block of paragraphs without quotation marks, with first paragraph line indented at half an inch. If citing more than one paragraph, line one of the second paragraph should have an additional 1/4 of an inch in indentation.

By contrast with other formats, paraphrasing or summarizing in MLA requires more precision, namely, one has to provide page numbers for information to which a reference is being made (like with other MLA in-text citations). Paraphrasing/reformulating/summarizing is a good way to convey a message by saving space and bypassing stricter requirements for quotations.

One must also know how to use capitalization/case in any given MLA 8 book citation. Thus, when listing titles and subtitles for books and articles (in bibliography lists), first, last, and principal words are all capitalized (including those separated by hyphens). Do not capitalize articles like “a, an, the”, prepositions like “in, to, of, against, between,” conjunctions like “but, and, for, or” (e.g. Molecular Biology of the Cell). This latter rule applies for MLA in-text citations as well (in case author name is missing and a shortened title is provided). For titles of non-English sources, only first words in the sentence or after a colon are capitalized.

In an MLA textbook citation (or other book types), italic font is used in bibliographic references to designate titles of books. Also it is used to denote containers (e.g. an almanac from which a piece of work, like a poem, was mentioned). Example:

Yet another instance in which italic font is used is for names of parent website (which are also treated as containers).

Obviously, knowing how to cite a book MLA is just one aspect of MLA formatting. There are other important requirements like those describing the format of a title page, heading, subheading, page header, endnote, footnote, as well as paragraph indentation, font, line spacing, spaces between paragraphs, etc.

Reasons for Using Our MLA Citation Tool

We have implemented on our website a special tool that greatly simplifies citing a book MLA and is intended to help you become more efficient at your writing tasks. This tool has a few key advantages as listed below:

• no registration is needed when using our tool so you can start working with your MAL citations immediately
• it offers a very snappy experience without lags, regardless of what operation you perform
• it has a very intuitive interface, which can be understood immediately
• it allows using both a manual MLA citation mode and an automatic citation mode by searching publication titles and retrieving all associated details of bibliographic references.
• it comes at no cost

 
Here is a short guide on how to use this tool

To generate your MLA bibliography and in-text citations follow these steps:

1. In the Style box, make sure MLA is chosen
2. Select Book as the type of Source (or a Book section or chapter)
3. Next, for an automatic search, paste in a target book title, click on Generate, and pick a source from the closest hits listed in search results. Alternatively, you can create a citation manually – just click on Manually cite and introduce all required details in corresponding boxes. When done, click Generate to create the reference.
4. Continue adding MLA citations by clicking Add new citation + at the bottom of your list of references. If you’ve noticed mistakes in information, choose the Edit option in front of any given reference and reintroduce/edit details in corresponding boxes.
5. Finally, you can obtain the generated bibliography either by copying it to clipboard (Copy All) or by downloading it into a separate word document (Download All .Doc)

Our MLA book citation generator can help enormously when creating your bibliography. It converts entries into the appropriate format, takes care of punctuation, formatting, word capitalization, etc. Also, it features a number of advantages when compared to other similar tools. Altogether, this can help you save tons of time when working on your project.