Works Cited: Webpages
The core elements of webpages:
The citation for the webpage.
The Core elements explained
1. Author.
- You probably wonder: Where is the author?
- The example above is a webpage with a group author that is the same as the publisher of the website, namely UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. MLA states that if the author of the web page is a corporate author (corporation, association, public institution, etc.), and the same as the publisher of the site, to OMIT the author element to avoid redundancy
2. Title of Source.
- is the title of the webpage entry in title-style
- webpages, like articles in a journal/magazine/newspaper, book chapters, TV series episodes, songs on an album, etc., are part of a larger work, and therefore are put “in double quotation marks”.
- if there is a subtitle, include it after the main title, separated by a colon :
3. Title of Container,
- is the site name; UNESCO is an acronym for the organization’s full name
- title of containers are italicized
4. Contributor,
- usually not needed
5. Version,
- usually not needed
6. Number,
- not needed
7. Publisher,
- is written in regular script
- but Where is the publisher in the citation?
- MLA states that if the site name (i.e. the title of the container) is essentially the same as the author and the publisher, then both the author and publisher elements can be omitted. As the author, title of container and publisher in our example are all UNESCO, we only need to use this information once in the title of container position
8. Publication Date,
- if the webpage entry does not show a specific date the information was written, use the copyright date of the page
- if you wish, you may also add the date of access as supplemental information after the location element, for example: Accessed 15 Aug. 2021.
9. Location.
- is the website address (URL). Note that you can omit http:// or https:// as long as the shortened URL still works
Now try it yourself!
The Library’s MLA Online Guide is a great resource to have on hand for creating reference citations.
Exercise 1: Find the elements needed for a works cited list citation for this webpage
Exercise 2: How do you write each core element in MLA Style?
See also section 2.90 of the MLA Handbook.
Capitalize the first word, the last word, and all principal words.
Capitalize the following:
-nouns
-pronouns (e.g. our, their)
-verbs
-adjectives
-adverbs
-subordinating conjunctions (e.g after, although, as, as if, as soon as, because, before, if, that, unless, until, when, where, while)
Do NOT capitalize the following if it is in the middle of a title:
-prepositions (e.g against, as, between, in, of, to, according to)
-coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet)
-the to in infinitives
-articles (a, an, the)
