📚 MLA Citation Converter
Generate accurate MLA 9th edition citations for books, websites, journals, films & more
| Source Type | Basic Format | Key Punctuation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Last, First. Title. Publisher, Year. | Period after each element | Italicize book title |
| Website | Last, First. "Article." Site, Date, URL. | Comma before URL | Include access date |
| Journal Article | Last, First. "Title." Journal, vol. X, no. Y, Year, pp. X–X. | Comma between vol/no/year | Include DOI if available |
| Newspaper | Last, First. "Title." Paper, Date, p. X. | Comma after date | Use p. or pp. for pages |
| Film | Title. Directed by First Last, Studio, Year. | Period after director | Start with film title |
| Book Chapter | Last, First. "Chapter." Book, edited by Name, Publisher, Year, pp. X–X. | Comma before edited by | Include page range |
| Podcast | Last, First. "Episode." Podcast, Date, URL. | Period after URL | Include episode number |
| YouTube Video | Creator. "Title." YouTube, Date, URL. | Period after URL | Use channel name as author |
| Scenario | Format | Example | In-Text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single Author | Last, First. | Orwell, George. | (Orwell 45) |
| Two Authors | Last, First, and First Last. | Smith, John, and Jane Doe. | (Smith and Doe 12) |
| Three+ Authors | Last, First, et al. | Brown, Alice, et al. | (Brown et al. 7) |
| No Author | Start with title | "Article Title." Website | (First word of title) |
| Organization Author | Organization Name. | World Health Organization. | (World Health Organization) |
| Editor as Author | Last, First, editor. | Klein, Paul, editor. | (Klein 88) |
| Month | MLA Abbreviation | Month | MLA Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | Jan. | July | July |
| February | Feb. | August | Aug. |
| March | Mar. | September | Sept. |
| April | Apr. | October | Oct. |
| May | May | November | Nov. |
| June | June | December | Dec. |
Citation is a program that converts references from one style to another. For instance, it fits to change quotes from APA format to MLA, or even change identifiers like PMIDs to formats fit for Excel. This type of tool helps save lot of time when one works on school essays or work tasks.
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Many free citation tools exist online. Some of them automatically create precise quotes for books, newspapers, web pages and videos, only searching the title or ID like URL or ISBN code. Others work as add-ons for browsers that grab the title, authors, date of publication and all other needed parts to form a good quote with just one tap.
Easy Tools to Make Citations
Between the most used styles of citation is APA, MLA Citation, Chicago, Turabian and Harvard. Some programs support thousands of styles, while others limit to only some of the most liked. There are special tools made especially for quotes according to IEEE, that one uses in engineering and technical areas.
For instance, one of them generates references for APA 6 and 7, MLA 7 and 8, the 17th edition of Chicago and Vancouver style.
Some of those tools are entirely free, without ads, without need of downloads and without need of an account. That makes them especially easy to get and use in the moment. Some of them also help with in-text quotes and fit to automatically arrange whole bibliographies for styles as MLA Citation, APA, Chicago or Turabian.
An important reason to know is that generators of quotes sometimes make errors. If one does not know how to format quotes by hand, those misteaks can stay unnoticed. Because of that it always pays to double check the result.
Currently some tools apply AI technology or human specialists to check in-text quotes and references against mistakes and errors.
Some programs allow citing several sources at once and even include in-text quotes directly in the text. Others mean to enter a known DOI or add it, and later choose a style as Chicago or IEEE from a dropdown to generate the quote right away.
Programs like Mendeley are free and offer extra tools for Word and LaTeX. They are widely precise when one imports data needed for quotes, although one is advised to check the results. Zotero is another great option that works well as a full reference manager or as a simpler single-entry citation generator through ZoteroBib.
Google Docs have built-in citation features that quietly improved over time. Writing tools from Grammarly offer a free citation tool that creates well arranged quotes according too the latest editions of APA, MLA Citation and the Chicago Manual of Style. Also citation guides with clear samples and instructions for setting of pages, annotated bibliographies and pages of citedworks are available in several of those tools.
