MLA Style: Writing & Citation

Works Cited List Citation:

Author's Last Name, First Name. Title of Document. Edition if available, Name of Professional Organization or Government Department/Agency/Committee, Publication Date, URL. Accessed date.

*Notes: If you are using a pdf version of the document, add at the following at the end of your citation: PDF download.

*When a work is published by an organization that is also the author, begin the entry with the title. If the author of a work is a division or committee of the organization, list the division or committee as the author, and list the organization as the publisher.

Examples:

Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Honouring_the_Truth_Reconciling_for_the_Future_July_23_2015.pdf. PDF download.

Mashford-Pringle, Angela et al. What We Heard: Indigenous Peoples and COVID-19.  Public Health Agency of Canada, Feb. 2021, www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/documents/corporate/publications/chief-public-health-officer-reports-state-public-health-canada/from-risk-resilience-equity-approach-covid-19/indigenous-peoples-covid-19-report/cpho-wwh-report-en.pdf. PDF download.

Practice Standard: Code of Conduct. College of Nurses of Ontario, 2023, www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/49040_code-of-conduct.pdf. PDF download.

In-Text Citation:              

Parenthetical style examples:

(Honoring the Truth 15)

(Mashford-Pringle et al. 24)

(Practice Standard 7)

 Narrative style example:

Mashford-Pringle et al. state that "insert quote here" (24).

Works Cited List Citation:

Title of Document: Subtitle. Edition, if available, Name of Professional Organization or Government Department/Agency/Committee, Publication Date.

Example:

Honoring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015.

In-Text Citation:

Example:

(Honoring the Truth 15)

Access Date

Works from the web can typically be changed or removed at any time, so while it's optional, the date which you accessed material is often important.  This is especially true when there is no date specifying when an item was produced.This date will be added to the end of the entry. E.g. Accessed 23 July 2016.

Dates

The format of dates is: Day Month (shortened) Year. E.g. 5 Sept. 2012.

Whether to give the year alone or include a month and day depends on your source: write the full date as you find it there.

If no date is listed, omit it unless you can find that information available in a reliable source.

Titles

Capitalize the first letter of every important word in the title. You do not need to capitalize words such as: in, of, or an.

If there is a colon (:) in the title, include what comes after the colon (also known as the subtitle).