General Guidelines for
the Bibliography
MLA
APA
Begin on new page
Yes
Yes
Begin with the centered title
Works Cited
References
Include an entry for every intext citation.
Include author, title, and
publication data for each entry,
if available. Use a period to set
off each of these elements
from the others and leave one
space after the periods.
Do NOT number the entries.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Do not
Do not
Put entries in alphabetical
order by the author’s or
editor’s last name. If the author
is unknown, use the first word
of the title excluding the
articles a, an, or the.
Entries are listed alphabetically by the author's last
name (or, for entire edited collections, editor names).
Author names are written last name first; middle
names or middle initials follow the first name.
Give the last name and initials for all
authors of a particular work for up to and
including seven authors.
If the work has more than seven authors, list
the first six authors and then use ellipses ( .
. . ) after the sixth author's name. After the
ellipses, list the last author's name of the
work.
Do not list titles (Dr., Sir, Saint, etc.) or degrees (PhD,
MA, DDS, etc.) with names. A book listing an author
named "John Bigbrain, PhD" appears simply as
"Bigbrain, John"; do, however, include suffixes like
"Jr." or "II." Putting it all together, a work by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. would be cited as "King, Martin Luther,
Jr.," with the suffix following the first or middle name
and a comma.
Alphabetize works with no known author by their title;
use a shortened version of the title in the parenthetical
citations in your paper.
Underline or italicize titles of
books and periodicals.
Use italics (instead of underlining) for titles of larger
works (books, magazines) and quotation marks for
titles of shorter works (poems, articles)
Italicize titles of longer works such as books
and journals.
Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes
around the titles of shorter works such as
journal articles or essays in edited
collections.
Capitalize the first and last and
all important words in all titles
and subtitles. Do not capitalize
articles, prepositions,
coordinating conjunctions, and
the to in infinitives.
Capitalize each word in the titles of articles, books,
etc, but do not capitalize articles (the, an),
prepositions, or conjunctions unless one is the first
word of the title or subtitle: Gone with the Wind, The
Art of War, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
When referring to any work that is NOT a
journal, such as a book, article, or Web
page, capitalize only the first letter of the
first word of a title and subtitle, the first word
after a colon or a dash in the title, and
proper nouns. Do not capitalize the first
letter of the second word in a hyphenated
compound word. Capitalize all major words
in journal titles.
In the publication data, provide
place published, publisher’s
names and date.
Abbreviate publisher’s names and months
Dec rather than December
Oxford UP instead of Oxford University Press
Do not abbreviate:
day, week, month, year
Do not use p., pp., or page(s).
Numbers alone will do. When
page spans over 100 have the
same first digit, use only the
last two digits of the second
number: 243-47
Use a hanging indent. Start the
first line of each entry at the
left margin and indent all
subsequent lines of the entry
five spaces.
Double-space within entries
and between them.
For every entry, you must
determine the Medium of
Publication. Most entries will
likely be listed as Print or Web
sources, but other possibilities
may include Film, CD-ROM, or
DVD.
URL or not?
List page numbers of sources efficiently, when
needed. If you refer to a journal article that appeared
on pages 225 through 250, list the page numbers on
your Works Cited page as 225-50.
Yes
Yes
Double space all citations, but do not skip spaces
between entries.
Double space all citations, but do not skip
spaces between entries.
Writers are no longer required to provide URLs for
Web entries. However, if your instructor or publisher
insists on them, include them in angle brackets after
the entry and end with a period. For long URLs, break
lines only at slashes.
If you're citing an article or a publication that was
originally issued in print form but that you retrieved
from an online database, you should type the online
database name in italics. You do not need to provide
subscription information in addition to the database
name.
Online scholarly journal articles without a
DOI (Digital Objective Identifier) require the
URL of the journal or database home page,
depending on where you located the article.
Use the following guides to check your work:
Purdue Online Writing Lab: APA Formatting and Style Guide
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Purdue Online Writing Lab: MLA Formatting and Style Guide
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
When referencing a print article obtained
from an online database, provide
appropriate print citation information
(formatted just like a "normal" print citation
would be for that type of work). By providing
this information, you allow people to retrieve
the print version if they do not have access
to the database from which you retrieved
the article.
For articles that are easily located, do not
provide database information. If the article is
difficult to locate, then provide database
information.