Citing Media

In-Text Citations

MLA Style directs you to use the author's last name and the page number you are referring to for your in-text citations.
          Ex: (Sommers 27)

In many cases, your media sources will not provide an author or page numbers.

• If the source does not provide author information, use the title (or the first word or two of the title) instead of the author name.
• If the source does not include page numbers, include only the author's name (or the title, if there is no author)
  • If your media resource has a runtime (e.g. a movie, song, podcast, etc.), include the range of time within the resource as hours, minutes, and seconds instead of page numbers.
    • For example: (00:03:22-01:05:18) to specify minute 3 and 22 seconds through hour 1, minute 5, and 18 seconds.

More information and examples can be found at NOVA's MLA Citation Style Guide.

Citations in MLA (8th ed.) generally look for this core information:

1) Author: Last Name, First Name or Username

2) Title of Source
This will vary according to what you are using from a work. For example, if you are
discussing a specific TV episode, the title of that episode will be your source. If you are
discussing an entire TV series, the source will be the TV series title.

3) Title of Container (Larger work holding your source (if there is one))
Ex: Name of Website where your article or video is found, Title of the TV series if you only use one episode as your source, Title of the album if you only cite one song, etc.

4) Other Contributors: Ex: editors, translators, actors, actresses, etc.

5) Version: Ex: Director's cut, 25th anniversary edition, Unabridged edition, etc.

6) Number: Ex: Season and episode number of a TV episode

7) Publisher: Ex: Wiley

8) Publication Date: Ex: 2020

9) Location: Link (URL or DOI) that directs to the resource, or page number in a journal or book (or time stamp in a video or audio resource)

10) Date of Access
Because online works are more easily changed than print works, it is helpful to include the date that you accessed the information. This is particularly true when there is no publication date included in the resource. However, date of access is considered optional in the MLA 8th edition (53). Check your assignment or ask your professor about whether you should include dates of access in your works cited.

Include as much information as you can. This may require a little digging around when you're using online media. Keep in mind that the information you provide should allow someone to locate the resource you used. You may not be able to find information to fill all of the core information categories, but include what you can find to help people access the resource in the future.

Some core categories (like Title of Container) may be repeated in the citation as necessary to accurately describe where the source that you used can be found.

For more information on each core information field, visit the Purdue OWL MLA Style Guide: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html

"MLA Citation Style Guide." NOVA Libraries, 2018, libguides.nvcc.edu/MLACitationStyle.

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL, Purdue U Writing Lab, 2018,
          owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html.

MLA Handbook. 8th ed., The Modern Language Association of America, 2016.

"The MLA Style Center." Modern Language Association of America, 2019, style.mla.org.

Why don't the citations above have authors listed?

When the author and publisher of a work are the same, begin the entry with the title, skipping the author element, and list the organization only as publisher (MLA Handbook, 25).