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From the OWL resource MLA Formatting and Style Guide

This resource was written by Jennifer Liethen Kunka and Joe Barbato; additional revision by Dave Neyhart and Erin E. Karper. Additional material by Kristen Seas..
Last full revision by Karl Stolley and Kristen Seas.
Last edited by Allen Brizee on April 9th 2008 at 10:29AM

Jump to listing of all of this resource's sections

Works Cited: Periodicals

MLA style is slightly different for popular periodicals, like magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals, as you'll learn below.

Article in a Magazine

Cite by listing the article's author, putting the title of the article in quotations marks, and underlining or italicizing the periodical title. Follow with the date with date and remember to abbreviate the month. Basic format:

Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Periodical Day Month Year: pages.

Poniewozik, James. "TV Makes a Too-Close Call." Time 20 Nov. 2000: 70-71.

Buchman, Dana. "A Special Education." Good Housekeeping Mar. 2006: 143-8.

Article in a Newspaper

Cite a newspaper article as you would a magazine article, but note the different pagination in a newspaper. If there is more than one edition available for that date (as in an early and late edition of a newspaper), identify the edition following the date (e.g., 17 May 1987, late ed.).

Brubaker, Bill. "New Health Center Targets County's Uninsured Patients." Washington Post 24 May 2007: LZ01.

Krugman, Andrew. "Fear of Eating." New York Times 21 May 2007 late ed.: A1.

If the newspaper is local, include the city name in brackets after the title of the newspaper.

Behre, Robert. "Presidential hopefuls get final crack at core of S.C. Democrats." Post and Courier [Charleston, SC] 29 Apr. 2007: A11.

Trembacki, Paul. "Brees Hopes to Win Heisman for Team." Purdue Exponent [West Lafayette, IN] 5 Dec. 2000: 20.

A Review

To cite a review, include the abbreviation "Rev. of" plus information about the performance that is being cited before giving the periodical information, as shown in following basic format:

Review Author. "Title of Review (if there is one)." Rev. of Performance Title, by Author/Director/Artist. Title of Periodical day month year: page.

Seitz, Matt Zoller. "Life in the Sprawling Suburbs, If You Can Really Call It Living." Rev. of Radiant City, dir. Gary Burns and Jim Brown. New York Times 30 May 2007 late ed.: E1.

Weiller, K. H. Rev. of Sport, Rhetoric, and Gender: Historical Perspectives and Media Representations, ed. Linda K. Fuller. Choice Apr. 2007: 1377.

An Editorial & Letter to the Editor

Cite as you would any article in a periodical, but include the designators "Editorial" or "Letter" to identify the type of work it is.

"Of Mines and Men." Editorial. Wall Street Journal east. ed. 24 Oct 2003: A14.

Hamer, John. Letter. American Journalism Review Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007: 7.

Anonymous Articles

Cite the article title first, and finish the citation as you would any other for that kind of periodical.

"Business: Global warming's boom town; Tourism in Greenland." The Economist 26 May 2007: 82.

"Aging; Women Expect to Care for Aging Parents but Seldom Prepare." Women's Health Weekly. 10 May 2007: 18.

An Article in a Scholarly Journal

Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume.Issue (Year): pages.

Actual example:

Bagchi, Alaknanda. "Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi's Bashai Tudu." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 15.1 (1996): 41-50.

If the journal uses continuous pagination throughout a particular volume, only volume and year are needed, e.g. Modern Fiction Studies 40 (1998): 251-81. If each issue of the journal begins on page 1, however, you must also provide the issue number following the volume, e.g. Mosaic 19.3 (1986): 33-49.

Journal with Continuous Pagination

Allen, Emily. "Staging Identity: Frances Burney's Allegory of Genre." Eighteenth-Century Studies 31 (1998): 433-51.

Journal with Non-Continuous Pagination

Duvall, John N. "The (Super)Marketplace of Images: Television as Unmediated Mediation in DeLillo's White Noise." Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994): 127-53.

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