Skip to Main Content

MLA Citation Style

Live Help

Chat loading...

Related Guides

About Citing Books

When you're finding books for your research, make note of the author name(s), book title, publication date, publisher, and place of publication.

The medium of publication for all “hard copy” books is Print.

For each type of source in this guide, both the general form and a specific example will be provided.

The following format will be used:

Parenthetical Citation - entry that appears in the body of your paper.

Works Cited - entry that appears at the end of your paper.

Information on citing and several of the examples were drawn from the MLA Handbook (7th ed.)

Numbers in parentheses refer to specific pages in the manual.

Book by a Corporate Author (156-157, 224)

When referencing a publication by a corporate author, you need to include both the name of the corporate body/organization and the page number(s) you drew the information from. 
 
If the name of the corporation/organization is quite long, a shortened form may be used for the in-text citation.
 
If there is a word such as "A", "An", or "The" at the beginning of the name of a corporate author, it may be omitted in both the In-text citation and the Works Cited entry.
 
General Format 
 
In-Text Citation:
(Organization Name page number)
 
Works Cited:

Organization Name. Book Title: Subtitle. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Medium.

  
Example
 
In-Text Citation:
(Natl. Research Council 116)
 
Works Cited:

National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington: Natl. Acad., 2007. Print.