These tools help students quickly create citations for their Works Cited page and in-text citations.
ZoteroBib (Free & Easy): This is fantastic for quick, on-the-fly citations. Students can paste a URL, ISBN, or DOI, and it generates the citation without needing an account or software installation.
Scribbr's MLA Citation Generator (Free with helpful features): This generator supports MLA 8th and 9th editions, allows for searching by title/URL/DOI, and offers an easy export to Word. They also have good guides integrated.
EasyBib (Free with premium options): A popular choice that can generate citations for various source types. It also has helpful guides for different MLA components.
MyBib (Free & User-Friendly): Similar to Scribbr, MyBib is a straightforward, ad-free generator that supports MLA 8 & 9 and a variety of sources.
These provide the rules and examples for formatting papers and citations.
Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab): This is considered the gold standard for MLA formatting and citation guidelines. It's incredibly comprehensive, with detailed explanations and examples for every aspect of MLA style, including:
General Format: Page layout, margins, fonts, headings.
In-Text Citations: Basics, author-page method, various source types.
Works Cited Page: Basic format, specific examples for books, periodicals, electronic sources, and other common sources.
Sample Papers: Full example papers demonstrating MLA formatting.
MLA 9th Edition Changes: Explains updates from previous versions.
Official MLA Handbook: The official Modern Language Association is the definitive source.
For students working on larger research projects or managing multiple bibliographies, these tools go beyond simple citation generation.
Zotero (Free & Open Source): A powerful tool that integrates with browsers to collect, organize, and cite sources. It helps users manage their research library and generate bibliographies as they write.
Mendeley (Free with premium options): Another robust reference manager that allows users to organize personal libraries, annotate documents, and cite as they write. It also has social networking features for researchers.
