How to: Cite eBooks in MLA Format

We understand that standards for citing books on the eReader in your research can be a bit ambiguous. The MLA (Modern Language Association) handbook has one format for citing eBooks and one for citing web pages, yet the eReader is an eBook on a web page.

Your professor may have a preference as to how they want your Works Cited pages to look, so we recommend checking with them before turning in your assignment. We do have a tool built right into the reader, which is a good starting point, but here’s an eBook citation template you might find helpful:

Structure

Author’s last name, First name. “Title of the chapter or section.” Title of the e-book, translated by or edited by First name Last name, vol. number, Publisher, Year of publication, page number(s). Title of the web site or database, URL.

Example

Berger, Kathleen Stassen. “The Development of Social Bonds.” The Developing Person: Through Childhood and Adolescence, 11th ed., Worth Publishers, 2018, 197. RedShelf, platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/383718.

Where to Find Relevant Information

Some of the info required for these citations can be... elusive. You’ll find a good chunk of it on the book details page, which is linked to your Shelf. Click the product in question to reveal the details.

The title, edition, and author are are in big, bold type at the top of the page.

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll see the publisher.

Chapter/section title, page number, and URL will be on the web page of the quotation you’re citing. You only need to include the URL between https:// and /sp/.

Go to the beginning of the book for the publication year (you always want to use the most recent year you see, since that’s the version you’re using). The publisher information is here again, as well:

In-text citations would be the same as any other book - author’s last name and the page number in parentheses, e.g. (Berger 197). Citing an eBook without page numbers would require only the author’s last name.

If your book doesn’t have page numbers, that’s totally fine - you can usually leave them out and cite the eBook as a web page. (But, again, we recommend checking with your professor about their preferences.)