Citing an Article in MLA Format

Lesson Plan - Get It!

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A periodical is a source that is published on a regularly recurring basis.

There is no specific publishing timeline; periodicals include newspapers, magazines, and journals. They can be published daily, weekly, quarterly, biannually, yearly, or even less frequently.

They are comprised of articles shorter than books, covering a variety of topics, so an article from a periodical is the material you would most likely be cited in a paper or project because you are probably going to be referring to a specific article rather than the entire content of a magazine or newspaper.

In the previous Related Lessons in this MLA Works Cited Page series, found in the right-hand sidebar, you learned about the nine pieces of information needed to cite a source on the Works Cited page.

• How many do you remember?

The nine pieces of information needed to cite a source are listed below in order.

1. author
2. title of source
3. title of container
4. other contributors
5. version
6. number
7. publisher
8. publication date
9. location

Remember that not all the items in the list apply to every source type, or even individual sources, because the information available may vary from source to source.

For periodicals, the relevant information you should look for is the author (#1), the title of the source (#2), the title of the container (#3), the number, which is the volume and issue numbers that show when the periodical was published (#6), the publication date (#8), and the location (#9).

The term "container" is new to MLA. It refers to the name of the larger source where the text can be located.

For example, the name of a newspaper (New York Times) is the container for a newspaper article ("Funding Education with Federal Grants").

You may want to write this general information on a notecard to use as a model for taking notes when you are conducting research for a paper or project. Writing down the citation information for a source in the correct order during the note-taking process makes it easier to create the Works Cited page citation.

To learn how to cite periodicals, print the Citing Periodicals in MLA Format handout found in Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar. Read all the notes on citing newspapers, magazines, journals, and special cases.

• Which type of information do you think might be missing from a newspaper article, a magazine article, or a journal article if you were looking for the information to write your citation?

Check your answer in the Got It? section.