What an MLA Works Cited Page Actually Is
A Works Cited page is the final page of your paper, listing every source you cited in the text. It is not optional, it is not a bibliography of everything you read, and it is not attached at the end as an afterthought. Every in-text citation you wrote — every (Smith 42) or (“Climate Change” par. 3) — must have a matching full entry here, and every entry here must match something in your paper.
The page follows the same formatting as the rest of your MLA paper: one-inch margins on all sides, double spacing throughout, Times New Roman 12pt or a similarly readable font. The heading Works Cited is centered at the top with no bold, no underline, and no quotation marks. Entries are sorted alphabetically by the first word and formatted with a hanging indent, meaning the second and subsequent lines of each entry are indented half an inch from the left margin while the first line touches it.
A Full Worked Example You Can Copy From
Here is what four typical entries look like, formatted correctly. Read through them as a set because the pattern becomes obvious once you see several source types side by side.
Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Little, Brown, 2000.
Hansen, James. “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, vol. 16, no. 6, 2016, pp. 3761-3812.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.” NASA, 12 Jan. 2024, climate.nasa.gov/.
Orlean, Susan. “The Dog Who Saved My Life.” The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2014, pp. 40-47.
A first attempt at these entries usually collapses the author’s name the wrong way, puts the date in the wrong position, or forgets to italicize the container title. The trouble with most student drafts is inconsistency: the book entry looks fine, but the journal article follows APA order (author, year, title) instead of MLA order (author, title, container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, date, location). MLA always runs in that sequence regardless of source type. The date comes near the end, not after the author.
The journal article above shows the container logic clearly. The article title goes in quotation marks. The journal name is the container, so it is italicized. Volume and issue numbers follow, then the year, then the page range. Nothing is skipped and nothing is reordered because you feel the date is more important.
For a website with no named author, the NASA entry above shows the solution: the institution that owns the page takes the author position. If no organization is named either, move straight to the article title in quotation marks. The URL comes last, with no angle brackets, and if your browser has copied https:// onto the front, you can remove that prefix.
What Changes Depending on Your Assignment
The examples above follow MLA 9th edition, which is the current standard. If your professor printed the assignment sheet a few years ago, they may still be working from MLA 8th edition. The differences are minor — mostly whether you include URLs and how you handle DOIs — but ask if you are unsure which edition the course uses.
Discipline matters too. The humanities use MLA. The social sciences and many science courses use APA. If you are writing for a psychology course, an economics class, or anything where the recency of a source carries weight, check whether your syllabus specifies MLA before spending time on this format. Some departments that technically fall in the humanities, certain history programs for instance, use Chicago instead.
Length affects the Works Cited page in a practical way. A short paper of three to five pages typically draws on four to eight sources. A research paper running ten to fifteen pages might have fifteen to twenty-five. The formatting rules do not change with length, but longer lists make alphabetization errors easier to introduce. Sort your entries after you have finished writing, not before, because sources get added and dropped during drafting.
If two of your entries start with the same author’s name, list them in alphabetical order by title. For the second entry onward by the same author, replace the name with three hyphens and a period. That signals to the reader that the author is the same without printing the name again.
One formatting question that sits slightly outside Works Cited but comes up at the same moment: if you are uncertain how the header on your paper’s first page should be laid out, the MLA format header guide we published covers that setup step by step.
Mistakes That Cost Points
The most common error is the missing hanging indent. A student types all the entries with every line flush to the left margin, which looks like a paragraph rather than a citation list. Graders notice immediately because every properly formatted Works Cited page in the world has that stepped left edge.
Alphabetizing by first name instead of last name is the second most frequent mistake. “Gladwell, Malcolm” belongs under G, not M. If you are sorting a long list, go letter by letter: Gale comes before Gladwell, which comes before Gray.
Forgetting to italicize containers is the third. Books, journals, newspapers, websites, films, and albums are containers and their titles are italicized. Articles, chapters, episodes, and short stories sit inside containers and their titles go in quotation marks. Getting this backwards — quotation marks on the journal name, italics on the article — reverses the hierarchy the format is designed to show.
Double spacing errors cause more trouble than students expect. The Works Cited page is double spaced throughout, including between entries. There is no extra blank line between entries. If you pressed Enter twice after each citation trying to add visual space, you have created triple spacing between entries and single spacing within them, which is the opposite of correct.
A missing page break is easy to overlook. Works Cited must begin at the top of its own page, not simply after a couple of blank lines following your conclusion. In Word or Google Docs, place your cursor at the end of the last sentence of your paper and insert a page break. That keeps the page intact even if you add or remove text earlier in the document.
The heading itself is worth a careful second look. “Work Cited” (singular) is wrong if you have more than one source, and “Works Cited Page” adds a word that does not belong. The heading is exactly two words, centered, in the same font and size as the rest of the paper.
Run through these checks before you submit. Every in-text citation has a matching Works Cited entry. The heading is centered with no special formatting. Every entry uses a hanging indent. The list is alphabetical by the first word of each entry. Those four pass or fail in under two minutes and they cover most of what costs marks.
What to Do Before You Submit
Read your Works Cited page out loud, entry by entry, and verify that the author name, title punctuation, and italics match the pattern shown above. Then open your paper and spot-check five in-text citations against their entries to confirm the names and page numbers line up. Those two passes take less than ten minutes and catch the errors that matter.
If the paper itself still needs work and the deadline is close, the writers at college-paper.com handle research papers, essays, and all the paper types where MLA formatting appears. You can see how the process works on the how it works page and check what the service costs for your specific deadline and page count using the price calculator. First-time orders qualify for a discount with code offer15.
Frequently asked questions
how do I do a hanging indent for works cited
In Microsoft Word, select all your citations, then go to Paragraph settings and set the Special indent to Hanging, 0.5 inches. In Google Docs, use Format > Align and Indent > Indentation Options and choose Hanging from the Special Indent dropdown. The first line of each entry sits at the left margin and every line after it is indented half an inch.
do you alphabetize works cited by first or last name
By the author's last name. If a source has no named author, alphabetize by the first significant word of the title, skipping A, An, and The. If you have two sources by the same author, alphabetize by the first word of the title for the second entry and replace the author's name with three hyphens followed by a period.
does works cited go on a new page
Yes. Insert a manual page break after your final paragraph so Works Cited starts at the top of its own page. The heading 'Works Cited' is centered, not bold and not in quotation marks, and it sits at the same one-inch margin as the rest of your paper.
what is the difference between works cited and bibliography
A Works Cited page in MLA lists only the sources you actually cited in the paper. A bibliography can include sources you consulted but did not cite. Most undergraduate MLA assignments ask for Works Cited, so follow your prompt carefully before adding anything you did not reference in the text.
how do I cite a website with no author in MLA
Start the entry with the title of the page or article in quotation marks, followed by the name of the website in italics, the publisher or organization if different from the site name, the date of publication or last update, and the URL. Leave out the https:// protocol if your instructor has not asked for it, but include the full path.
do I need to include the URL for every website source
MLA 9th edition recommends including URLs for online sources, but some instructors ask you to omit them because links go dead. Check your assignment sheet first. If your instructor says nothing, include the URL without angle brackets, and break it only after a slash if it runs past the right margin.