App Features
AI ProofreaderText HumanizerParaphrasing ToolAI SummarizerAI TranslatorFree ToolsFAQsUser GuideBlogPricingContactSign up - It's freeSign inBy signing up, you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Build accurate MLA 9th edition citations in seconds. Paste a DOI or title and the generator retrieves the real metadata from Crossref, then formats the Works Cited entry and every in-text form: parenthetical, narrative and no-page variants. Journal articles, books, chapters and websites, following the current container system throughout.
Trusted by researchers publishing in
Paste a DOI, a doi.org link or the paper's title and the generator pulls the real metadata from Crossref's open database of 160+ million scholarly records. Books, chapters and websites can be entered manually.
Open the source details to verify authors, year, volume and pages, the thirty-second habit that keeps a reference list accurate. Every field is editable before you copy.
Copy the reference entry with italics intact for Word or Google Docs, plus every in-text form: parenthetical, narrative and quotation variants, ready to paste.
Lookups query Crossref, where publishers register their own metadata. Authors, volume, issue and DOI come from the source's actual record rather than a model's recollection.
Quotation marks for the work, italics for its container, labelled vol., no. and pp.: the 9th edition's template, filled in correctly for each source type.
Author-page parenthetical, narrative, whole-work and no-author variants are generated beside the entry, so quoting mid-paragraph never means re-deriving the format.
Copy places rich and plain text on the clipboard together: container titles arrive in Word or Google Docs already italicized, hanging indent away from done.
MLA style, maintained by the Modern Language Association, is the standard in literature, languages, philosophy and much of the rest of the humanities. Where the sciences cite findings, the humanities cite passages, and the style is built around that difference: an in-text citation is a page pointer, (Chen 517), designed to walk the reader to the exact line being quoted or close-read.
The system's second idea is the container. Rather than a separate template for every source type, MLA asks what the work is and where it lives: an article in a journal, a chapter in a book, a page on a website, an episode in a series. The work's own title takes quotation marks; the container's takes italics; the numbers that locate it, vol., no., year, pp., follow in a fixed order. Learn that one pattern and most sources fall into place, which is exactly the pattern this generator fills in.
What no generator can decide is what deserves citing: MLA's plagiarism guidance turns on presenting others' ideas as your own, so paraphrases need citations as much as quotations do. Keep quotations exact, keep page numbers honest, and check that every citation resolves to a Works Cited entry and back. A generator makes the format effortless precisely so your attention can go there.
For worked examples across source types, see our MLA 9 citation guide. Comparing styles? The main citation generator shows six side by side, and the title case converter has a dedicated MLA mode for the capitalization.
One journal article, taken apart. Hover any coloured part of the Works Cited entry, or of the six in-text variations, to see what it is and the 9th edition rule behind it.
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep Quality and Academic Performance in First-Year University Students." Journal of Applied Learning Science, vol. 115, no. 4, 2023, pp. 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Alphabetize by the first author's surname and format every entry with a hanging indent.
(Chen 517)
(Chen and O'Connor 517)
(Chen et al. 517)
Chen argues that... (517)
(Chen and O'Connor)
Common for websites and other unpaginated sources.
("Sleep Quality" 517)
Hover or tap any coloured part for what it is and the rule behind it.
Six conventions that make an entry read as MLA rather than a loose approximation of it.
MLA asks where a work lives: an article's container is the journal, an episode's is the series. The container is italicized; the work inside it takes quotation marks.
Capitalize each principal word: articles, prepositions and conjunctions stay lowercase unless first or last. This applies to the source title and the container alike.
MLA spells out what each number is: vol. 115, no. 4, pp. 512-528. No bare digits in the entry, which is why an MLA reference reads so differently from an APA one.
In-text citations carry the author and page with no comma between them: (Chen 517). No year, no p. label. Two works by one author are told apart by a short title.
Three or more authors collapse to First Author et al. everywhere, including the Works Cited entry. Two-author works always name both.
MLA 9 asks for a DOI as a full https://doi.org link where one exists, a stable URL otherwise, and an access date only for sources likely to change, added as Accessed 14 July 2026.
The same generator, four source types. Watch the container shift: journal, book, edited collection, website.
Chen, Maya R., and Liam O'Connor. "Sleep quality and academic performance in first-year university students." Journal of Applied Learning Science, vol. 115, no. 4, 2023, pp. 512-528. https://doi.org/10.1234/jals.2023.0158.
Chen, Maya R. The Science of Student Sleep. 2nd ed., Academic Press, 2021.
Chen, Maya R. "Sleep and memory consolidation." Handbook of Learning Science, edited by Liam O'Connor and Sofia Alvarez, Academic Press, 2022, pp. 301-322.
World Health Organization. "Sleep and adolescent health." WHO Fact Sheets, 2024, https://example.org/sleep. Accessed 14 July 2026.
All four are produced by the generator above; every author, title and DOI in them is invented for illustration.
ProofreaderPro proofreads your full draft with tracked changes and never touches your citations: grammar, clarity and register, reviewable line by line. Built for students and researchers, free to try.
Proofread my writing freeProofread, humanize, paraphrase and translate your academic writing in one place. Free to start, no credit card required.
Get Started Free