| Author. | Title of Book. | Version, | Edition, | Publisher, | date. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Author, FirstName. Author1, FirstName1, and FirstName2 Author2. Author, FirstName, et al. Organization Name. |
Title of Book: Subtitle of Book. | E-book ed., |
Xth ed., Unabridged ed., |
Publisher Name, |
YYYY, |
Don't rely solely on the cover for information! Look inside at the beginning of the book for the title page and copyright information page to confirm titles, authors, publication date, publishers, and editions.
Follow the usual MLA rules about authors:
As standalone works, the titles of books are italicized.
Technically MLA considers books to be self-contained, so we're effectively skipping element 3 (Title of Container).
However:
If you're using a piece of a book that has a distinct, different author from the overall book, you will start your citation with the author and title of that smaller piece. The chapter title (or short story title or article title) will go inside "quote marks" (short little source, short little lines). You'll also note the range of pages this section spans.
If a book has just one author but only one chapter is useful to you... do not cite that chapter separately! Your parenthetical citations will specify where you were pulling content. Your Works Cited citation will be for the book as a whole.
Print books don't need this. (Normally.)
E-books may specify that this is an "e-book ed."
You can exclude any business labels in the publisher name -- Inc, Ltd, LLC, and so on.
If a publisher is named Something & Someone, write it in your citation as: Something and Someone [bolded for emphasis].
You can abbreviate publisher names like Oxford University Press to Oxford UP. (Unfortunately doesn't work for University of Something Press names...)
Big publishers often have smaller publishers under them (called imprints). In this case, only name the imprint in your citation, as it is the entity that is most directly responsible for putting the book out.
Sometimes a work may actually be published by two organizations working together. In this case, you'd name both, separate by a forward slash with spaces around it. E.g. Smithsonian / Georgetown UP.
This will be just the year of publication.
If a book has been reprinted and you want to include the original year of publication + the year of your copy:
Peattie, Donald Culross. A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America. 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
Only use the organization as publisher rather than listing it twice.
MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association, 2021.
Brown, Nathan, and Sheryle A. Proper. The Everything Paying for College Book. Adams, 2005.
Graff, Gerald., et al. "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Across disciplines ed., 4th ed., Norton, 2018.
Whitman, Glen, and James Dow. Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. EBSCO eBook Collection, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s1088435&db=nlebk&AN=815518&site=ehost-live.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. E-book ed., Grosset and Dunlap, 1897. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.
Sherry, Michael. "Death, Mourning, and Memorial Culture." The Columbia History of Post-World War II America, edited by Mark Carnes, Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 155-178. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.lscsproxy.lonestar.edu/lib/lonestar-ebooks/detail.action?docID=908425.
Arnold, H. F. "The Night Wire." Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Marvin Kaye, Barnes & Noble ed., Barnes and Noble Books, 1993, pp. 328-334.
Cadwalladr, Carole. "Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search." "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Across disciplines, 4th ed., Norton, 2018, pp. 536-555.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Beautiful Stranger." The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell, Tor, 1987, pp. 874-879.
Hopper, Edward. Nighthawks. 1942, Art Institute of Chicago. Prebles' Artforms, by Patrick Frank, 11th ed., Pearson, 2014.
Landacre, Paul. Illustration of paper birch trees. A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1966, p. 164.
In the Landacre example, the art was produced for the book, rather than being reproduced in the book.
The Landacre illustration is not titled in the book, so we write a description of the image instead. Because it's a description and not a formal title, we do not italicize it nor put "quotes" around it.
This example also applies to prefaces, forewords, afterwords, and other appendices not part of the main text. These section names are more of a label than a proper title, so they do not receive quote marks.
The page numbers at the end (xiii-xv) give the range of pages the introduction is found on; it is typical for introductions to have Roman numerals for their pages.
Kaye, Marvin. Introduction. Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Marvin Kaye, Barnes & Noble ed., Barnes and Noble Books, 1993, pp. xiii-xv.
The "Barnes & Noble ed." could be excluded in light of B&N also being the publisher, but the copyright information page did provide enough detail about the arrangement that in this one case, the redundancy seemed appropriate.
Thunberg, Greta. "Foreword: This Book is Your Toolbox." Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It, by Jamie Margolin, Hachette, 2020, pp. xiii-xviii.
Pine, Frank Woodworth. Introduction. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, e-book ed., Holt and Co., 1916, www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm.
Because these documents are standalone and lengthy, their citation actually mimics a book (or an e-book, to be more precise, because you'll also be including information about the website or repository hosting the manuscript as a second container).
Dusza, Erin M. Epic Significance: Placing Alphonse Mucha's Czech Art in the Context of Pan-Slavism and Czech Nationalism. 2012. Georgia State University, Master's thesis. ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University, scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/103/.
UN Environment. Global Environment Outlook: GEO-6: Healthy Planet, Healthy People. Edited by Paul Ekins et al., 6th ed., Cambridge UP, 4 Mar. 2019, www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-6. PDF.
Superman: Birthright. By Marc Waid, illustrated by Leinli Francis Yu, inked by Gerry Alanguilan, colored by Dave McCraig, DC Comics, 2005.
Afzal, Hadiya. "Hadiya Afzal, Nineteen, She/Her." Interview by Jamie Margolin. Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It. Hachette, 2020, pp. 119-20.
Martin, George R. R. A Feast for Crows. Narrated by Roy Dotrice, audiobook ed., Random House Audio, 2011.
Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer. Narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, audiobook ed., Macmillan Audio, 2017.
Martin, George R. R. A Feast for Crows. Narrated by Roy Dotrice, audiobook ed., Random House Audio, 2011. CD.
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