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Business Citation Guide: MLA Formatting Tips

This guide provides examples for citing business resources in APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles.

MLA Formatting Tips

Sample MLA Papers (including Works Cited List)

Reviewing sample MLA papers can help you better understand how your paper should be formatted. Examples to review:

Formatting Tips for your Paper

Check out these quick tips for formatting your MLA Style paper

  • Margins: Add 1 inch margins on all sides.
  • Header (individual papers): Starting with your first page, add your last name followed by page number (e.g., Chen 2) at the top right corner of the page. 
  • Title Page & Header (Group project): Include a title page if several students have written the paper. (See sample paper for example) Starting with your second page, add the students' last names followed by the page number at the top right corner of the page. If all last names do not fit in a single line in the header, you may just include the page number.
  • Line Spacing: Double-space your text.
  • Paragraph Alignment & Indentation: Indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5 inch. Align your paragraphs to the left margin.
  • Recommended Fonts: Unless specified by your instructor, MLA recommends choosing an easy to read typeface set to 11 pt, 12 pt, or 13 pt. This includes:
    • Calibri
    • Arial
    • Times New Roman
    • Georgia

The above information has been adapted from Seneca Libraries' MLA Citation Guide (MLA 9th Edition). Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

What is a Works Cited List?

It is a new page at the end of your assignment and it provides readers (i.e. your professor) with the complete bibliographic information for the sources you used. 

Formatting Tips

  • It should be a new page, at the very end of your assignment.
  • It should be double spaced.
  • The title is Works Cited. It should be centred on the page and not bolded or underlined.
  • It should be organized alphabetically by author's last name. If you are using a work with no author, use the source's title.
  • All works cited entries end with a period.
  • It should have a hanging indent. This means all lines, except for the first line in a paragraph, are indented .5 inches or 2.5 cm.
  • Check out Purdue OWL's MLA Works Cited formatting tips for additional help!

Example Works Cited List

Access a View-Only version of the sample Works Cited list.

 Missing Information Works Cited List Citation In-Text Citation
No Author

If no author is provided, start the citation with the title of the source you are citing. Note that an author can also be an organization or corporation (e.g., Health Canada). If and only if an item is signed as being created by Anonymous, use "Anonymous" where you'd normally put the author's name.

Examples:

"Get on Board for Train safety." Toronto Star, 17 June 2012, A14-15.

Introduction to Food Science. ABC Press, 2019.

  

Use the following format for your in-text citation:

(Title of Source Page Number).

If the source has a long title, you may shorten it be using the first word / phrase from the title.

 

Examples:

("Get on Board" A15)

(Introduction to Food Science 20)
No Publication Date

If no publication date is provided, you may exclude the date element from your Works Cited List citation.

MLA recommends including an access date at the end of your citation if your source does not have a publication date. 

Example:

Ribecca, Severino. The Data Visualisation Catalogue. datavizcatalogue.com. Accessed 3 May 2021.

 Follow recommended in-text citation format for your source.
No Page Numbers

Depending on the format of your source, the citation template may require page numbers (e.g., newspaper articles, magazine articles). If your source doesn't have page numbers, you may exclude the page element from your Works Cited List citation.

When citing a work in text without page numbers, you may leave out the page element in your in-text citation. You may also consider using an alternative to help your reader locate the paraphrase or quote in your source (e.g., chapter number, slide number, time stamp). 

Examples:

(Illowsky et al. ch. 5)

(Lim slide 2)
No Title

If your source is untitled, include a description of the source in place of a title in your citation. 

Example:

Potato chips - personally ate in the past 6 months for all respondents 14+ in Ontario. Vividata, 2018.

Use the following format for your in-text citation: (Description of Information). If the description is long, you may shorten it in your in-text citation by using the first word/phrase of the description.

Example: (Potato chips)
No Database Name

If you find an article or eBook using the library website's main search make sure to click through to read the full article. Once you view the article or eBook, the database name is often displayed at the top of the page.

If it is ambiguous or says something like "searching 12 databases" and you can't tell which one database it is from, enter the name of the database provider (e.g., Proquest, EBSCO, etc.) as the database.

 Follow recommended in-text citation format for your source.

The above information has been adapted from Seneca Libraries' MLA Citation Guide (MLA 9th Edition). Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.