MLA
MLA - Modern Language Association
MLA style is a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. For over half a century, it has been widely adopted for classroom instruction and used throughout the world by scholars, journal publishers, and academic and commercial presses. Learn more about the history of the style with our interactive time line.
Works are now published in a dizzying range of formats. On the Web, modes of publication are regularly invented, combined, and modified. MLA style was updated in 2016 to meet the challenges facing researchers today. It recommends one universal set of guidelines that writers can apply to any type of source. Entries in the list of works cited are composed of facts common to most works—the MLA core elements. Works are cited in the text with brief parenthetical citations that direct readers to the entries in the works-cited list.
