MLA 9 Citation Generator
MLA 9th edition is the standard citation format for humanities disciplines, English literature, comparative literature, foreign languages, philosophy, religious studies, and most undergraduate writing courses in the United States.
Generates MLA 9th edition works-cited entries
Handles containers within containers correctly
Marks unknown fields rather than guessing
Free, no sign-up, no usage limits
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- Free tier
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- Processing
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How MLA 9 simplified the rules and what still trips students up
MLA 9th edition, released in 2021, refined the container-based template introduced in MLA 8 without changing the core structure. The works-cited entry is built from nine elements in a fixed order, separated by specific punctuation: author. Title of source. Title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location. The trailing period at the end of the entry is required, and the punctuation between elements is fixed: a comma after the container title and a period at the end of each major block. Students who learned MLA 7 or earlier are often confused by the container concept, but the underlying logic is clean once you see it. A journal article lives inside a journal (container 1), which may live inside a database (container 2). Each container gets its own block of elements describing it.
The most common student errors in MLA 9 are wrong punctuation, missing access date for online sources without a clear publication date, and misformatted page ranges. Page ranges in MLA use only the changing digits in the second number, so a range from page 144 to 152 is formatted as pp. 144-52 rather than pp. 144-152. The article title appears in quotation marks with title case capitalization, which is different from APA where the article title is in sentence case without quotation marks. The journal title is italicized in both styles, but in MLA the volume and issue numbers are preceded by "vol." and "no." labels rather than being given as bare numbers in italics. These small differences compound across a long bibliography into the kind of inconsistent formatting that gets marked down.
In-text citations in MLA follow the author-page format, (Smith 14), with no comma between the author and the page number. This is a different convention from APA, which uses (Smith, 2021, p. 14) with commas and a "p." label. When the author name is part of the sentence, only the page number goes in parentheses, Smith argues that the result is overdetermined (14). When citing multiple works by the same author, MLA disambiguates with a shortened title in italics or quotation marks depending on the source type, (Smith, Theory 14). Direct quotations longer than four lines are block quoted with half-inch indentation, no quotation marks, and the parenthetical citation outside the final punctuation.
Online sources require extra care because MLA 9 made the access date optional rather than required, which most professors interpret as "include it when the source could change or disappear and skip it for stable sources with clear publication dates". Wikipedia, news sites that update articles, and any source without a clear publication date should include an access date as the final element. Stable scholarly sources with DOIs do not need one. The tool follows this rule automatically based on the metadata it extracts. As with any citation generator, verification still matters. Compare the metadata summary at the top of the output against the actual source before copying. If a field reads [unknown] or looks wrong, the resulting MLA entry will be wrong in the same way.
How to use this tool
Paste a DOI, URL, ISBN, or raw citation. The tool returns an MLA 9 entry alongside APA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, and BibTeX. Copy the MLA block under the MLA heading.
How It Works
Step-by-step guide to mla 9 citation generator:
- 1
Open the FixTools Citation Generator
Click through to the Citation Generator. The page loads in seconds and runs entirely in your browser. No account is needed.
- 2
Paste a DOI, URL, ISBN, or raw citation
Paste any of these inputs into the text box. For journal articles, prefer the DOI when one exists. For books, an ISBN works well. For web sources, paste the URL.
- 3
Click Run Citation Generator
The tool extracts or recalls the source metadata and formats it in six styles in 5 to 10 seconds.
- 4
Verify the metadata summary
Check author, year, title, publisher, and container against the actual source. Any [unknown] fields should be filled in by hand before trusting the output.
- 5
Copy the MLA 9 block
Scroll to the MLA section and copy the entry. Paste it into your works-cited list with hanging indent applied. Add the entry to the alphabetical order by author surname.
Real-world examples
Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:
High school junior writing an AP English Literature paper
A student writing a 1,500-word paper on symbolism in The Great Gatsby has 8 sources spanning the novel itself, two literary criticism articles, a biography of Fitzgerald, and several online resources. She pastes each into the tool and assembles the works-cited list in 10 minutes. The teacher checks the formatting and finds it correct on the first submission.
English major writing a senior thesis
A senior writing on postcolonial literature has 45 sources to cite in MLA 9. She works through them in two sittings, pasting DOIs, ISBNs, and URLs. The tool flags two URLs as [unknown] publication date, which prompts her to add access dates manually. The thesis advisor reviews the works-cited list and finds it ready to submit.
Comparative literature student citing translated works
A student writing on Borges in English translation needs to cite both the original Spanish and the English translation in the same works-cited entry. The tool handles the translator field correctly in MLA 9 format, listing the translator after the title with the label "translated by" before the name.
First-year writing student learning MLA for the first time
A first-year college student in a required writing course has never formatted citations before. The tool produces clean MLA 9 entries from URLs and DOIs, and the student uses the output as a learning aid by comparing the formatted citation to the source page to understand which field came from where. By the end of the semester, the student can recognize most MLA conventions without needing the tool.
When to use this guide
Use this when your English, literature, language, or humanities professor requires MLA 9th edition formatting. Most US high school and undergraduate writing courses use MLA.
Pro tips
Get better results with these expert suggestions:
Always italicize journal and book titles
Container titles, the journal name, the book title, the database name, are italicized in MLA. Article titles and chapter titles go in quotation marks instead. Mixing these up is one of the most visible errors in a student works-cited list because the formatting itself looks wrong even to a reader who is not checking the citation against the source.
Add the access date for any source that could change
MLA 9 made the access date optional, but for any source without a clear publication date or that could update over time, include it as the final element formatted as Accessed 15 Mar. 2024. This protects you when a grader checks the URL and finds the page has changed since you cited it. The tool adds access dates automatically for sources where the publication date is uncertain.
Use the URL without the https protocol when MLA recommends it
MLA 9 recommends omitting the https:// prefix from URLs in the works-cited entry when the URL is long and the prefix adds no information. The tool follows this convention by default, producing URLs like doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.29 rather than the full https form. Check with your professor if they prefer the full URL, because some courses still require it.
Export BibTeX even for MLA papers
Even if you are writing in Word or Google Docs for an MLA paper, copy the BibTeX block alongside the MLA entry. A Zotero or Mendeley library imported from BibTeX can re-export to MLA 9 on demand, which is useful when you reuse sources across multiple papers in the same course or across courses in the same major.
Use title case for article and book titles
MLA capitalizes all major words in titles, unlike APA which uses sentence case. Get this right or your reference list will look inconsistent.
Include containers when the source is nested
A journal article in a database has two containers: the journal and the database. Both go in the citation if the source is accessed through the database.
Check page-range formatting
MLA shortens the second number in a page range when the digits do not change. 144 to 152 becomes pp. 144-52, not pp. 144-152.
Frequently asked questions
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