MLA Citation Generator for Journal Articles
The generator below is preset to MLA (MLA 9th edition) for a journal article.
Check your reference against your institution's guidelines — lecturers sometimes vary the style.
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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 journal articles
Template: Author, First Name, and Second Author. “Title of Article in Title Case.” Title of Journal in Title Case, vol. volume, no. issue, Year, pp. first page–last page, https://doi.org/xxxx.
- The article title goes in quotation marks, in title case. The journal name is italicised and is the container.
- Give the volume and issue as “vol. 18, no. 2”, then the year, then the page range introduced by pp., with an en dash.
- MLA prefers the DOI over a URL when the article has one. Give it as https://doi.org/… — that form is preferred to a bare doi: number.
- With two authors, only the first is inverted (Okafor, Daniel, and Lena M. Torres). With three or more, give the first author followed by et al.
- In text, there is no comma and no “p.”: (Okafor and Torres 148), or (Patel et al. 27) for three or more authors.
Examples
Okafor, Daniel, and Lena M. Torres. “Mindful Attention and Test Performance in First-Year Students.” Journal of College Learning and Cognition, vol. 18, no. 2, 2023, pp. 145–162, https://doi.org/10.1234/jclc.2023.0182.
Patel, Sunita K., et al. “Group Study Formats and Exam Outcomes.” Journal of College Learning and Cognition, vol. 9, no. 1, 2022, pp. 23–38.
Whitaker, James. “Feedback Timing and Revision Quality in Undergraduate Writing.” Writing Studies Quarterly, vol. 14, 2021, pp. 201–219.
Common mistakes
- Using APA habits in an MLA list: sentence case titles, initials instead of first names, or (Author, Year) in text.
- Writing “volume 18, issue 2” in full — MLA uses vol. and no.
- Giving the journal’s web URL when the article has a DOI.
- Adding “p.” or a comma in the in-text citation.
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 journal article in MLA style.
From the RozContent Study Blog: read the matching study guide on the blog.