MLA Citation Generator for Book Chapters

The generator below is preset to MLA (MLA 9th edition) for a chapter in an edited book.

Check your reference against your institution's guidelines — lecturers sometimes vary the style.

Paste a URL, DOI, ISBN or title, or fill in the form yourself — the citation updates as you type, and you can copy it formatted, with italics and hanging indent intact, or as plain text. Under the tool you will find the MLA rules for this source type, worked examples, and the mistakes students make most often.

The rules: MLA format for book chapters

Template: Author, First Name. “Title of Chapter in Title Case.” Title of Book in Title Case, edited by Editor Name and Editor Name, Publisher, Year, pp. first page–last page.

The chapter is the source and the book is its container, so the chapter author and chapter title come first, the chapter title in quotation marks.
Name the editors after the book title with the words “edited by”, in normal order (not inverted).
Finish with publisher, year, and the chapter’s page range, introduced by pp. and separated by an en dash.
In text, cite the chapter author and the page you used: (Nair 95) — never the editor.

Examples

Nair, Priya. “Working Memory in the Classroom.” Advances in Learning Science, edited by James Whitfield and Rosa Delgado, Northfield Press, 2022, pp. 87–112.

Ellery, Tom. “Note-Taking Systems That Work.” Study Methods Handbook, edited by Karen Doyle, Ashgrove Press, 2023, pp. 45–66.

Common mistakes

Listing the chapter under the editor’s name — the chapter author leads.
Forgetting the page range — a chapter entry without pp. is incomplete in MLA.
Putting the chapter title in italics instead of quotation marks.
Writing “edited by Doyle, Karen” — editors are named in normal order.

Need this in APA or Chicago instead? APA version of this page · Chicago version of this page

From the RozContent Study Blog: read the matching study guide on the blog.