MLA Referencing – Citing a Journal Article

MLA referencing, developed by the Modern Language Association, is notable for its minimal citation style, allowing you to cite sources in your work without interrupting the flow of prose.

However, the minimal detail used for MLA citations means it’s essential to reference sources clearly and consistently. In today’s blog post, we explain how to do this for a journal article.

In-Text Citations

MLA referencing uses parenthetical citations, where the author’s name and relevant page numbers are given in the main text of your essay at the end of the sentence:

The events of 1976 were ‘an economic and political crisis of transforming importance’ (Burk 352).

If the author is named in the text, simply give the page numbers at the end of the sentence:

Burk describes the events of 1976 as ‘an economic and political crisis of transforming importance’ (352).

Citing Multiple Articles by the Same Author

Since MLA citations don’t include a year of publication, you’ll also need to identify the text in citations when citing more than one work by the same author. For a journal article, this means giving a shortened version of the article name:

Burk describes both the 1916 run on the pound (‘Keynes and the Exchange Rate Crisis’ 405) and the British request for help from the IMF in 1976 (‘The Americans, the Germans, and the British’ 352) as major crises.

If the author’s name is not mentioned in the main text it should be included in the citation, separated from the article title by a comma:

The 1916 run on the pound was the worst financial crisis of the war at that point (Burk, ‘Keynes and the Exchange Rate Crisis’ 405).

Reference List/Works Cited Page

MLA referencing requires all cited sources to be listed alphabetically by author surname in a ‘Works Cited’ page at the end of your essay. As of the eighth edition, for a journal article, this involves providing the following:

Author. ‘Title of Article’. Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages.

In the case of a print article, this would look something like this:

Burk, Kathleen. ‘The Americans, the Germans, and the British: The 1976 IMF Crisis’. Twentieth Century British History, vol. 5, no .3, 1994, pp. 351-69.

For journal articles found online, you should also indicate either a DOI or URL and the date when you last accessed it.

When citing more than one work by the same author, list articles alphabetically by title, with three hyphens and a period in place of the author’s name for each one after the first:

Burk, Kathleen. ‘The Americans, the Germans, and the British: The 1976 IMF Crisis’. Twentieth Century British History, vol. 5, no. 3, 1994, pp. 351-69.

– – – . ‘J. M. Keynes and the Exchange Rate Crisis of July 1917’. The Economic History Review, vol. 32, no .3, 1979, pp. 405-16. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.1979.tb01700.x. Accessed 6 June 2016.