On this page
Updated . Example details checked against Crossref, doi:10.1037/0000120-016 (also the APA Style sample reference for a chapter).
The MLA format
Pattern
Last name, First name. “Title of Chapter.” Title of Book, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. #-#.
- Chapter author leads, not the editors. Three or more authors: the first and “et al.”
- Book title in italics after the chapter title.
- “edited by” and the editors in normal order. Three or more editors: the first and “et al.”
- Pages of the whole chapter, shortened past 99: pp. 345-59.
A real example
Works Cited entry
Aron, Laurent, et al. “Culinary Arts: Talent and Their Development.” The Psychology of High Performance: Developing Human Potential into Domain-Specific Talent, edited by Rena F. Subotnik et al., American Psychological Association, 2019, pp. 345-59, https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016.
In-text citation
(Aron et al. 350)
When details are missing
- The chapter has no separate author (one author wrote the whole book): cite the book, and give the chapter page in the citation.
- No DOI: end after the pages.
Common mistakes
- Listing the editors first. The chapter’s own author leads. Editors follow the book title.
- “Eds.” or “ed. by.” MLA spells out “edited by.”
- The book in quotation marks. The chapter is quoted; the book is italic.
Or let Format do it.
Choose Chapter or work in an anthology, or paste the chapter’s DOI, and Format asks for the chapter, the book, the editors and the pages. Format writes the Works Cited entry and the in-text citation in MLA 9, exactly as shown above, and builds the Works Cited page when you export to Word or PDF. MLA and APA are free.
Questions
How do I cite an essay or a short story in an anthology?
The same way: the essay or story is the chapter, the anthology is the book.
What if I use the editors’ introduction?
Cite the introduction with its writers as authors and “Introduction” as the title, without quotation marks.
More citation guides
The same source in other styles
Similar sources in MLA
Every source kind is on the MLA page, and every style is on How to cite.