MLA Quick Style Guide: Periodicals

• Scholarly journals typically have a volume number and issue number. If they do not have one of these elements, you skip it in the citation.
• Provide the page range, preceded by the abbreviation pp. If the pages are not consecutive, provide the first page number followed immediately by a + sign, without a space separating the number and the symbol.
• If there is one or two authors, list both authors in the same order that they are listed in the original source. The first author's name is inverted, but the second author's name is not. If there are three or more authors, provide the first author followed by an "et al."

Basic format:

Author. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, volume, issue, date, pages. 

Example:

Smith, Helen. "Women's Education." Wells College Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2019, pp. 31-35.

Smith, Helen, et al. "Smith Hall." College Building, vol. 2, no. 5, 2018, pp. 5-24.

The citation for an article in an online scholarly journal is the same as the citation for an article in a scholarly journal, with the below additions:

• A URL or DOI is required, and is placed at the end of your citation following the page numbers.
• If the article does not have page numbers (for example, it was published online only and has an article number), you may omit the page numbers.

Format:

Basic format: Author. “Title of article.” Title of Journal, volume, issue, date, pages, DOI/URL.

Example:

Wells, Henry. "American Express." Businesses of New York Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 2019, pp. 5-9, doi: xxxx.

• If your article was found in a database, MLA considers a database to be a container. It is listed in italics at the end of the citation, prior to the URL or DOI.

Format:

Author. “Title of article.” Title of Journal, volume, issue, date, pages. Database, URL/DOI.

Example:

Wells, Henry. "Wells College." Colleges in New York, vol. 8, no. 3, 2017, pp. 6-10.  Fake Database, www.fakedatabase.com/article/1.

• If the newspaper is not well known, include the city name after the title of the newspaper.
• If you viewed the newspaper or magazine online, include a URL and an access date at the end of the article. 

Format:

Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Periodical, Day Month Year, pages, URL. Access date.

Example:

McKay, Peter A. “Stocks Feels the Dollar’s Weight.” Wall Street Journal, 4 Dec. 2006, pp. C1. 

Kalb, Claudia. “These are History’s Most Notorious Liars.” National Geographic, June 2017, www.nationalgeographic.com/ magazine/2017/06/famous‐liars. Accessed 23 May 2017.