MLA In-Text Citation Generator
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Paste a DOI, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, or ISBN and get the MLA 9 in-text citation back, with the works cited entry alongside it so the two match. Add a page number and it goes straight into the citation. This mla in text citation generator also does whole batches from a .bib, .ris, .enw, or .nbib file.
An MLA in-text citation generator gives you the author and the page, with no year
This is the thing to get right, and the habits carried over from APA are what get in the way.
An MLA in-text citation is the author’s surname followed by the page number. No year. No comma between them. No p. label.
(LeCun et al. 440)
Compare that with the APA version of the same source, (LeCun et al., 2015, p. 440), and there are three differences in a string eight characters long. The year lives in the works cited entry and nowhere else.
If you name the author in your own sentence, only the page number stays in the brackets:
LeCun et al. argue that the approach generalises (440).
Both forms come back for every source you paste, so you pick whichever fits the sentence rather than rewriting the sentence to fit the citation.
Page ranges are elided the same way they are in the works cited entry, so 440 to 442 becomes (LeCun et al. 440-42). That is correct MLA and not a truncation.
Sources with no page numbers, and citations with two or three authors
Two cases the tool handles and one it cannot.
Two authors are both named, joined by the word “and”, not an ampersand: (Smith and Lee 12). MLA uses “and” in the parenthetical citation where APA uses “&”, which is another habit worth unlearning if you switch between them.
Three or more authors give the first surname plus et al.: (LeCun et al. 440). That threshold matches the works cited entry.
Sources with no page numbers are the case a generator cannot solve for you. If you are citing a source with no pagination, MLA says to leave the locator out entirely rather than invent one, so the citation is just (Zhang). Do not substitute a paragraph number unless the source itself numbers its paragraphs, and do not use a PDF page number from your own printout, because it will not match anyone else’s copy.
The citation only works if the reader can find the matching entry on your works cited page, which is why the entry is shown next to each citation here. For the full sorted page with the hanging indent applied, use the MLA works cited generator, which takes the same sources. If you want a single formatted entry rather than the in-text mark, that is the MLA citation generator.
Every citation needs a DOI, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, ISBN, or a reference file behind it, so websites and videos are written by hand.
Frequently asked questions
MLA adds a shortened form of the title, in quotation marks for an article or italics for a book: (LeCun, "Deep Learning" 440). It does not use the 2015a and 2015b letters APA uses, because there is no year in an MLA citation to attach a letter to. The tool gives you the author and page; add the short title yourself when two entries would otherwise be ambiguous.
Yes, switch the output style. APA gives you the parenthetical and narrative forms with the year, which is a different shape from MLA, and the APA in-text citation generator page explains that one.
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