The title follows standard MLA rules. Italicize the book title or put the article title in quotes.
Let’s say the book is called Space Cheese Chronicles. Your full Works Cited entry looks like this: Brown, Sarah, Tom Green, and Lisa White. Space Cheese Chronicles. Penguin, 2026.
Notice the period after the author list? It separates them from the title. A little punctuation hug.
If it’s an article from a journal, you’d put the article title in quotes and the journal name in italics. Same author format.
Example for a journal: Brown, Sarah, Tom Green, and Lisa White. “Cheese on Mars.” Astro-Dairy Monthly, vol. 12, no. 3, 2026, pp. 45-67.
Mla formatting & style guide (1)
Don’t forget the volume, issue, and page range for articles. MLA loves those details.
What If There Are More Than Three Authors?
Hold up—what if you have four, five, or even twenty authors? MLA has a trick for that, too.
For sources with four or more authors, you only list the first one and add “et al.”
“Et al.” is Latin for “and others.” It sounds fancy, but it just saves you from typing a novel-length name line.
Example: Brown, Sarah, et al. Space Cheese Chronicles. Penguin, 2026.
And in the in-text citation? Same deal: (Brown et al. 42). Easy peasy.
But remember: for exactly three authors, you list all three. No “et al.” allowed for the three-strong squad.
So if you have exactly three, give them all the spotlight. They earned it.
