Citing a Book in MLA Format

Contributor: Melissa Kowalski. Lesson ID: 11887

There are so many types of sources to cite in different ways, someone could write a book about them! Happily, the MLA has! You will learn the rules for properly citing a book in your Works Cited page!

1To2Hour
categories

Writing

subject
English / Language Arts
learning style
Visual
personality style
Beaver
Grade Level
Middle School (6-8)
Lesson Type
Dig Deeper

Lesson Plan - Get It!

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Citing different types of sources require different formats. No problem!

Start with citing books!

One type of source that you may work with while doing research is books.

If you missed or would like to review the first Related Lessons in our MLA Works Cited Page series, found in the right-hand sidebar, now's the time to check it out.

Books and print periodicals, including newspapers, magazines, and journals, were the primary research sources for several decades. Even though much research can be conducted over the Internet, books still play an important part in research, so it is necessary to know how to cite them on the Works Cited page.

  • Can you think of a situation where using a book for research is necessary or the preferred mode for finding information?

old books

The eighth edition of the MLA Handbook, printed in 2016, changed how sources are cited on the Works Cited page.

Therefore, if you've ever encountered MLA citation formatting in the past, you may need to learn the newer, updated citation format. If you search for information on MLA citations on your own, ensure the source refers to the most recent edition of the MLA Handbook, so you are learning about the correct version of MLA citation formatting.

When searching for information on MLA citations, do not use online software that claims to create correct ones. Most are unreliable and made for older, outdated editions of MLA.

Most auto-formatting software algorithms can't correctly process the nuances in the information needed for citations, and many software programs have basic formatting errors that will show up in the finished citation.

It is easier and faster to learn to create the citation yourself; then, you will know it is correctly formatted.

The eighth edition of MLA differs from earlier editions because, instead of providing specific formats for every conceivable source type, it includes a list of steps a person should follow in the citation process.

Some steps are more relevant to certain types of sources than others, so it is important to know what type of source you cite to know which steps in the citation process are more applicable to the source you cite.

These are the general steps for all citations on the Works Cited page in MLA.

  1. author
  2. title of source
  3. title of container
  4. other contributors
  5. version
  6. number
  7. publisher
  8. publication date
  9. location

Review the nine steps again.

  • Can you guess which ones apply more to citing a book on the Works Cited page?

The information you are most likely to use when citing a book is the author, title of the source, other contributors, version, publisher, and publication date—steps 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8.

You may also want to write these pieces of information down in the correct order on a notecard to use as a guide to help you collect information from sources when conducting research. Taking notes on the information in the same order as it will be written in the reference page citation makes it easier to create the citation.

Print the Citing a Book in MLA Format handout found in Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar to learn how to cite a book using these steps. After reading the notes, consider where you will likely find this information for a book.

  • Did you say a book's title and copyright pages?

Good! The title page of a book, located at the beginning of a book, often contains the essential information about the text, including the author's name, the title of the book, the editor if there was one, the edition number if there is one, and the publishing house's name.

The year can sometimes be located on the title page or on the back of the title page, which is called the copyright page.

The publisher's name might sometimes be on the copyright page instead of the title page. You may have to do some sleuthing when looking for citation information in a book because each publisher has its conventions about where to place the book's identifying information.

Now that you know more about how to cite a book, move on to the Got It? section to watch citations being created and practice creating book citations in MLA format.

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