MLA Works Cited Generator
Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.
Paste your DOIs, PubMed IDs, arXiv IDs, or ISBNs, one per line, and get a finished MLA 9 works cited page back. Alphabetised, formatted, and copied with the italics and hanging indent intact so it survives being pasted into Word or Google Docs. You can also upload a .bib, .ris, .enw, or .nbib export and convert the whole thing in one go.
How this works cited generator orders the list
MLA sorts alphabetically by whatever sits in the author position, and the useful part is what happens when that is not a person’s surname.
With an author, it is the surname. Standard, and what this works cited generator does automatically whatever order you paste in.
With no author, the title moves into the author position and the entry alphabetises by the title’s first significant word. “The” and “A” do not count, so a book called The Cambridge Companion files under C.
With multiple works by the same author, the entries alphabetise by title, and the author’s name is replaced by three hyphens on every entry after the first. That substitution is a display rule for the page rather than something belonging to a single entry, so it is worth checking after you paste, particularly if you later add a source and the alphabetical order shifts.
MLA does not use the 2015a and 2015b letters APA needs, because an MLA in-text citation carries a page number rather than a year and so has no ambiguity to resolve. If you also need the in-text citations, the MLA citation generator produces them from the same sources.
Page-level formatting rules for an MLA works cited page
These are the rules about the document rather than about any citation, and they are the ones a generator cannot apply for you because they live in your word processor.
The works cited list starts on its own page at the end of the paper, with the heading Works Cited centred at the top. Not bold, not italic, not underlined, and not in quotation marks. If there is only one entry, the heading is Work Cited, singular.
Everything is double spaced, including within entries, with no extra blank line between them. Each entry takes a hanging indent: first line at the margin, every following line indented half an inch.
The Copy button puts both an HTML and a plain text version on your clipboard at once, so Word and Google Docs receive the italics and the hanging indent already applied and you only need to set the double spacing and the heading. Paste into a plain text editor and you get clean text with no markup instead.
Entries have to come from a DOI, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, ISBN, or an uploaded reference file. MLA wants a URL and usually an access date for web sources, neither of which a lookup can supply, so websites and videos go in by hand after you paste.
Frequently asked questions
In Word: select the entries, then Paragraph, Indentation, Special, Hanging, 0.5 inch. In Google Docs: Format, Align and indent, Indentation options, Special indent, Hanging. Half an inch is what MLA asks for and it is the default in both.
Fifty per submit. Paste more and the extras are skipped with a note telling you how many. For a longer list, upload a .bib or .ris file in batches.
No. Works Cited lists only what you actually cite in the paper. A list of everything you consulted is a Works Consulted or Annotated Bibliography, which is a separate thing your instructor has to ask for.
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