MLA Citation Guide (MLA 9th Edition): Formatting Appendices and Works Cited List

There are a few rules to follow that comply with MLA guidelines if you are adding an appendix to your paper :

• The appendix appears before the works-cited list.
• If you have more than one appendix, name the first appendix Appendix A, the second Appendix B, etc.
• Each appendix begins on a new page.
• The appendices should appear in the order that the information is mentioned in your essay.

Every source cited in the text of your paper should be listed at the end of your paper. Title this list Works Cited. Here are eight rules for your work-cited list:

1. Start a new page for the list (e.g., if your paper is 4 pages long, start your works-cited list on page 5).
2. Center the title, Works Cited, at the top of the page. Do not bold or underline the title.
3. Double-space the list.
4. Start the first line of each citation at the left margin; indent each subsequent line five spaces (also known as a "hanging indent").
5. Alphabetize the list by the first word in the citation. In most cases, the first word will be the author’s last name. Where the author is unknown, alphabetize by the first word in the title, ignoring the words a, an, the.
6. For each author, give the last name followed by a comma and the first name followed by a period.
7. Italicize the titles of full works: books, audiovisual material, websites.
8. Do not italicize titles of parts of works, such as: articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals / essays, poems, short stories or chapter titles from a book / chapters or sections of an Internet document. Instead, use quotation marks.

This sample paper includes an assignment with a works-cited list in MLA format.