A works cited or reference page lists every source you cited in your essay, in alphabetical order with a hanging indent, on a new page at the end. MLA calls it Works Cited; APA and Harvard call it References.
The rules are simple, but they are strict, and small slips cost marks. This guide walks through building the page one step at a time, with example entries for the sources students cite most.
Six Steps to a Correct Source List
- Start a new page at the end of the essay and add the right title for your style.
- List only the sources you cited in the text, and every one of them.
- Format each entry using your style's pattern for that source type.
- Put the entries in alphabetical order by the first author's surname.
- Apply a half-inch hanging indent and the correct line spacing.
- Check each in-text citation against its entry, and each entry against a citation.
What to Call the Page in Each Style
| Style | Page title | Title format | Spacing |
|---|---|---|---|
| MLA 9th | Works Cited | Centered, plain text | Double |
| APA 7th | References | Centered, bold | Double |
| Chicago notes and bibliography | Bibliography | Centered | Single within entries, blank line between |
| Chicago author-date | References | Centered | Single within entries, blank line between |
| Harvard | Reference list or References | As your university guide shows | As your university guide shows |
A reference list contains only sources you cited. A bibliography can also include background reading, but most essay briefs expect only cited sources. Check your instructions.
What Goes in, and What Stays Out
- Include: every book, article, website, report, video and dataset you quoted, paraphrased or summarized.
- Leave out: sources you read but did not cite.
- Leave out in APA: personal communications, such as interviews and emails, which are cited in the text only.
- Include once: a source cited several times still has one entry.
MLA 9th Edition Examples
MLA builds each entry from core elements in a set order: author, title, container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, date and location.
Book: Garcia, Maria. Climate Policy and Public Opinion. Oxford UP, 2022.
Journal article: Okafor, Daniel, and Sara Lindqvist. "Sleep Regularity and Working Memory in Adolescents." Journal of Adolescent Health Research, vol. 9, no. 2, 2021, pp. 112-28. https://doi.org/10.0000/jahr.2021.0092.
Web page: Patel, Ravi. "How Cities Are Cooling Their Streets." Urban Futures, 14 Mar. 2024, www.urbanfutures.example/cooling-streets.
MLA uses title case for titles, quotation marks for articles and web pages, and italics for books, journals and websites. Entries end with a full stop. The sources are invented to show the format.
APA 7th Edition Examples
APA entries follow author, date, title and source. Titles of articles and books use sentence case.
Book: Garcia, M. (2022). Climate policy and public opinion. Oxford University Press.
Journal article: Okafor, D., & Lindqvist, S. (2021). Sleep regularity and working memory in adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health Research, 9(2), 112–128. https://doi.org/10.0000/jahr.2021.0092
Web page: Patel, R. (2024, March 14). How cities are cooling their streets. Urban Futures. https://www.urbanfutures.example/cooling-streets
APA 7th leaves out the publisher location, writes DOIs as links and does not add a full stop after a DOI or URL. Use "&" before the last author.
Chicago and Harvard Examples
Chicago Bibliography
Book: Garcia, Maria. Climate Policy and Public Opinion. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Journal article: Okafor, Daniel, and Sara Lindqvist. "Sleep Regularity and Working Memory in Adolescents." Journal of Adolescent Health Research 9, no. 2 (2021): 112–28. https://doi.org/10.0000/jahr.2021.0092.
The 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style no longer requires the place of publication for books. If your course uses the 17th edition, add the city before the publisher, for example "Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022".
Harvard
Book: Garcia, M. (2022) Climate policy and public opinion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Web page: Patel, R. (2024) How cities are cooling their streets. Available at: https://www.urbanfutures.example/cooling-streets (Accessed: 9 October 2026).
Harvard has no single official manual, so punctuation varies between universities. Follow your own university's guide exactly.
Trickier Sources: Chapters, Reports and Missing Details
Books, articles and web pages cover most essays, but a few other source types appear often. These are the ones students most often get wrong.
Chapter in an edited book, APA 7th: Nkemelu, A. (2020). Water rights and rural livelihoods. In J. Hart (Ed.), Resources and justice (pp. 41–63). Routledge.
Chapter in an edited book, MLA 9th: Nkemelu, Adaeze. "Water Rights and Rural Livelihoods." Resources and Justice, edited by James Hart, Routledge, 2020, pp. 41-63.
Report by an organization, APA 7th: Coastal Housing Trust. (2023). Rental affordability in coastal towns. https://www.coastalhousing.example/report-2023
The sources are invented to show the format. Cite the chapter you used, not just the edited book, so the reader can find the exact author and pages.
When Details Are Missing
- No date: APA uses "n.d." in place of the year; MLA simply leaves the date out and may add an access date.
- No author: move the title to the author position and alphabetize by it.
- No page numbers: leave the page range out of the reference entry, and use a paragraph number or section name for quotations in the text.
Ordering the Entries
All four styles list entries alphabetically by the first author's surname. Never order them by where they appear in your essay; that is a feature of numbered styles such as Vancouver and IEEE.
- No author: alphabetize by the title, ignoring "A", "An" and "The".
- Organization as author: alphabetize by the organization's full name.
- Same author, several works in APA: order by year, earliest first; for the same year, add a, b and so on after the year, such as 2021a and 2021b.
- Same author, several works in MLA: give the name in the first entry, then use three hyphens and a full stop (---.) in its place for the next, ordered by title.
Hanging Indent and Spacing
Every entry uses a hanging indent: the first line starts at the margin and the following lines of the same entry are indented half an inch. It makes each author's surname easy to spot.
- Select all the entries.
- Open the paragraph settings in your word processor.
- Under special indentation, choose "Hanging" and set it to 0.5 inches (1.27 cm).
- Set line spacing to double for APA and MLA, and remove extra space before and after paragraphs.
Do not create the indent with the space bar or tab key. It breaks as soon as the text moves.
Final Check Before You Submit
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Every in-text citation has an entry | Missing entries make attribution incomplete |
| Every entry is cited in the text | Uncited entries suggest padding |
| Names and years match exactly | Mismatches confuse the reader and cost marks |
| Title capitalization fits the style | APA uses sentence case; MLA and Chicago use title case |
| Italics on the right element | Book and journal titles are italic; article titles are not |
| DOIs and URLs work | Readers should be able to find the source |
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Frequently Asked Questions
They are the same kind of list in different styles. MLA calls it Works Cited; APA and Harvard call it References.
Usually not, but check your assignment guidelines, as some courses include it.
Not in a reference list or works cited page. List only sources you cited, unless the brief asks for a bibliography of background reading.
Yes in MLA and APA. Chicago bibliographies usually single-space each entry with a blank line between entries.
Use the first significant word of the title, ignoring "A", "An" and "The".
APA does not use them except for pages designed to change. MLA makes them optional. Many Harvard guides require them.
In APA 7th, yes. In MLA, no; it is centered in plain text.
Yes, as a starting point. Check every entry, as generators often get capitalization and details wrong.
In APA, the reference list comes before any appendices. For MLA and Chicago essays, placement of appendices varies between course guides, so follow the order your instructor sets and keep the source list easy to find.
Alphabetize by surname, then by first name or initial. In APA in-text citations, add the authors' initials to tell them apart, such as (J. Lee, 2021) and (M. Lee, 2019).