MLA Citation Generator for Books
The generator below is preset to MLA (MLA 9th edition) for a book.
Check your reference against your institution's guidelines — lecturers sometimes vary the style.
Need a second pair of eyes on the whole assignment? RozContent’s Assignment Support checks referencing, proofreading and structure — first sample free.
Paste a URL, DOI, ISBN or title, or fill in the form yourself — the citation updates as you type, and you can copy it formatted, with italics and hanging indent intact, or as plain text. Under the tool you will find the MLA rules for this source type, worked examples, and the mistakes students make most often.
The rules: MLA format for books
Template: Author, First Name. Title of Book in Title Case: Subtitle in Title Case. Publisher, Year.
- A book is its own container: author, italicised title in title case (subtitle included), publisher, and year — in that order.
- An edition other than the first is a version element and goes before the publisher: 3rd ed.,
- Only the first author is inverted. A second author follows in normal order after “and”.
- MLA book entries do not give the publisher’s city.
- In text, cite the author and page with no comma and no “p.”: (Vasquez 74).
Examples
Vasquez, Elena. The Architecture of Memory: How the Brain Builds the Past. Brightwood Academic Press, 2021.
Reed, Marcus T. Cognitive Development in Practice. 3rd ed., Harborview Publishing, 2020.
Gomez, Lucia F., and Daniel W. Hart. Statistics for the Social Sciences: A Practical Approach. 2nd ed., Beacon Academic, 2019.
Common mistakes
- Adding the publisher’s city — MLA dropped place of publication.
- Putting the edition after the year instead of before the publisher.
- Using initials instead of the author’s first name as published.
- Writing (Vasquez, p. 74) in text — MLA in-text citations have no comma and no p.
Need this in APA or Chicago instead? APA version of this page · Chicago version of this page
Go deeper: read the guide how to cite a book in MLA style.
From the RozContent Study Blog: read the matching study guide on the blog.