Note: The following excerpts from the MLA Formatting and Style Guide refer only to the most common kinds of sources you will be consulting for your research paper. For other sources not covered in this handout, kindly refer to the MLA 7 Formatting and Style Guide found at the Online Writing Lab of Purdue University, which can be accessed at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/1/.
MLA Works Cited Page: Books
When you are gathering book sources, be sure to make note of the following bibliographic items: author name(s), book title, publication date, publisher, place of publication. The medium of publication for all “hard copy” books is Print.
Basic Format
The author’s name or a book with a single author's name appears in last name, first name format. The basic form for a book citation is:
Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication.
Book with One Author
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin, 1987. Print. Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. Denver: MacMurray, 1999. Print.
Book with More Than One Author
The first given name appears in last name, first name format; subsequent author names appear in first name last name format.
Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn, 2000. Print.
If there are more than three authors, you may choose to list only the first author followed by the phrase et al. (Latin for "and others") in place of the subsequent authors' names, or you may list all the authors in the order in which their names appear on the title page. (Note that there is a period after “al” in “et al.” Also note that there is never a period after the “et” in “et al.”).
Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan: Utah State UP,