Tools

BibTeX to MLA Converter

Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.

Paste or upload a .bib file and get an MLA 9 Works Cited list, in alphabetical order, with titles in title case and journal names in italics. Copy it into Word or Google Docs and the italics and hanging indent come with it.

How to convert BibTeX to MLA

Step 1

Add your BibTeX

Use Upload file, drop the .bib on the box, or paste the entries.

Step 2

Convert

MLA is already selected on this page.

Step 3

Copy

Copy all puts the Works Cited list on your clipboard, formatted. A download saves it as plain text.

Your .bib is read and formatted in your browser, never on our server.

What an MLA 9 entry looks like

Zeta, Yann, et al. "Deep Learning." Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, 2015, pp. 436–44, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.

  • Authors: the first author surname first. Two authors are both named; three or more become the first author and "et al."
  • Containers: the article title in quotation marks, then the "container" (the journal, book or website) in italics, then volume, issue, year and pages.
  • Titles in title case, whatever the case in your .bib.
  • DOIs as https://doi.org/ links at the end.

Check these before you use the list

  • Page numbers in your in-text citations. MLA in-text citations use the author and page, such as (LeCun et al. 437), which comes from your text, not the .bib. The MLA in-text citation generator builds them.
  • Entry types. A book chapter saved as @article prints the book as if it were a journal. Fix the type in the .bib and convert again.

Frequently asked questions

MLA 9, the current edition (2021). It keeps MLA 8's containers model, so most references look the same in both.

Yes, with the biblatex-mla package: \usepackage[style=mla]{biblatex} and your .bib. Use this converter when you need the Works Cited list outside LaTeX.

If an entry has a syntax error, the result lists it with its line number and reason, and the other entries still convert.

It is free and needs no signup. Your .bib is read in your browser and never sent to our server.

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