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MLA 9th Edition Style Guide: Home

Welcome to MLA!

This guide introduces the MLA Style.

The MLA (Modern Language Association) Style is a set of rules for formatting and writing papers. It includes

  • spacing
  • headers
  • page numbering
  • spelling, punctuation, and abbreviations
  • how citations should look

Citation consists of two parts:

  1. Full Citations -- the complete information about a source listed on the works-cited-list page.
  2. In-Text Citations--the brief references used in the body of your paper to refer readers to the correct entry on the works-cited-list page.

These rules are published in the MLA Handbook. The current edition is the 9th edition.

English and Humanities classes commonly use this style for papers. Be aware that there are other styles, such as APA and Turabian/Chicago. These styles are alternate rules for formatting a paper. If you learn to use one style correctly, you should be able to apply that knowledge to learning a second style.

Valencia Library MLA Team

This guide created and maintained by the Valencia Library MLA Team:

Beth King, Erich Heintzelman, Lisa Clousing, Reggie Davis, Jess Langone, and Joanne Wojtyto. 

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