Jerz > Writing > Academic > BibBuilder > Web Page (or other digital resource)
Lastnamerson, Arthur. "Specific Web Page Title." Name of the Website. Publishing Organization, 23 July 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2011.
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Eaves, Morris, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. Lib. of Cong., 28 Sept. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2011. <http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/>.
Green, Joshua. "The Rove Presidency." The Atlantic.com. Atlantic Monthly Group, Sept. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2011.
"The Scientists Speak." Editorial. New York Times. New York Times, 20 Nov. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2011.
Click labels on the left side of the form. Tips will appear in this space, to help you determine what to type for each blank.
Note: The BibBuilder is a helpful guide, but it does not attempt to implement every possible quirk and feature of MLA Style; neither does it attempt to correct anything that might have been mistyped in the box. ("Garbage in, garbage out.")
For help formatting your Works Cited page, see MLA Style Papers: Step-by-step Instructions for Formatting Research Papers.
If your source names several people responsible for the page (such as an "editor," a "webmaster," a "designer," and the "author"), focus on the roles that are most important to your reason for citing a site. (For example, if you are citing a page because you want to talk about its graphics and layout, the name of the designer would be important, and the author unimportant.)
Write the author's family name first, followed by given names.
Write the first author's name in reversed order (surname first, followed by given names). Write the other names in normal order.
A group whose individual members are not listed on the title page is treated as a corporate author. Give the name of the group. See MLA Handbook, 7th ed., 5.5.5.
When the author is a government agency, give the name of the place being governed, followed by a period; then give the name of the agency.
For a more detailed treatment of government publications, see MLA Handbook, 7th ed., 5.5.20.
Einstein, Albert. Letters of Albert Einstein. Ed. D. B. Jones.
If you are citing the work of an editor, compiler, designer, moderator, or somebody else who is not the author, present the person's name the same way you would cite an individual author (family name first), and label the person's role (Ed., Webmaster, Designer, etc.).
If the source identifies no named individual, you may treat the publishing organization as a group author.
If you can't find either a named individual or a named organization, you may not have found a credible source.)
Options:
If the author is a corporation or organization (such as Microsoft or the Sierra Club), see the "Group" option.
If the source does not name an author or publisher, you may wish to reconsider the credibility of your site.
The full title of the specific page you are citing. A domain name such as "CNN.com" or "YouTube" is not specific enough.
MLA Style has specific guidelines for how to capitalize the titles of books and articles; check with your instructor to see whether he or she wants you to standarize the capitalization (using MLA style guidelines) or preserve the capitalization the way it appears on the page you are citing.
MLA style asks that we capitalize most words, including all
In the middle of the title, MLA style asks that we lowercase:
If it would help your reader understand the reason you are citing this page, add a simple label that describes the content.
The MLA Style guidelines do not have examples of every single thing a researcher might possibly cite. For instance, you won't find a ready-made example for how to cite the spoof of Emily Dickinson's poetry that appears as graffiti in the game Portal; however, you can certainly find (or create) a screenshot of that text, and then cite it as you would any digital resource.
Ask yourself, if my reader wants to look up this detail and see it for him- or herself, how helpful can I be?
When the page you are citing appears as part of a collection (of blog posts, forum topics, news articles), cite the name of the collection.
You may abbreviate for clarity. For instance, the full title of Seton Hill University's home page is
Yor clarity, you could cite that as
See "Title of Page" for a note on capitalization.
Einstein, Albert. Letters of Albert Einstein. Ed. D. B. Jones.
Label the editor, translator, or compiler with an appropriate abbrevation (Ed., Trans., or Comp.), and include the person's name, in the usual order.
If the source identifies no author, leave the "Ed/Tras" slot blank and see No Author instead.
Options:
You may have to search for the website's "About" page in order to find out the name of the publisher.
The MLA considers a personal blog to have no publisher. (See the the Larry Lessig example, section 5.6.2, MLA Handbook 7th ed.) You may leave the slot blank; the Bib-Builder will add "n.p." for you.
1 Aug. 2011Enter the date Use three-letter abbreviations for the months, but spell out May, June, and July.
Electronic sources tend to change over time. If you are citing a web page or online database, include the date that you last accessed your source.
1 Aug. 2011Use three-letter abbreviations for the months, but spell out May, June, and July.
5 May 2011
20 June 2011
1 Oct. 2011
Material posted on the World Wide Web should be identified as "Web." If you are citing a printout, or an electronic resource that you encountered through DVD or e-mail, choose an appropriate option.
Electronic sources tend to change over time. If you are citing a web page or online database, include the date that you last accessed your source.
5 Apr. 2011Use three-letter abbreviations for the months, but spell out May, June, and July.
5 May 2011
20 June 2011
1 Oct. 2011
The 7th Edition of the MLA Handbook states that it is up to the instructor to decide whether URLs are required.
People are far more likely to search for material than type long URLs, so giving a title "The iPad Goes to College This Fall," the date 27 July 2010, and the and the publisher's name "CNN.com" is far more useful than a long URL.
If you are citing a article that you happened to locate through an online database, the URL will be full of long, imposible-to-hyphenate lines of random letters, generated just for you when you logged in with your ID and password. Such a URL is useless for anyone else.
To cite an article from an online database such as Academic Search Elite, see instead How to Cite an Article in MLA Style".
Nevertheless, if the page you are citing includes a short, useful URL, it may help your reader tremendously if you choose to include the URL. (Note that the URL is the full address of the specific page. Simply listing "cnn.com" or "setonhill.edu" is not specific enough.)
If you need to reak your URL across two lines, don't add a hyphen; just break the URL after a slash, and include the initial "http://".