What's New in MLA 7th Edition?
Highlights the biggest differences between the 6th and 7th editions of the MLA citation guidelines.
The 7th edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers came out in April 2009, and as a result, the Citation Maker templates were updated. There are many changes in the citation formats. Here are a few:
- No More Underlining Titles of complete works must now be in italics instead of underlined.
- Publication Medium Each citation must indicate what kind of source was used: print, web, DVD, etc. Most of the time, this will appear at the end of the citation. For web entries, the publication medium appears just before the date of access.
- Optional URLs The URLs for web sources are now optional. MLA suggests not using them but recognizes that some educators might still require them. Therefore, MLA templates have the note "Optional. Ask teacher" by the URL fields.
- Drop Subscribing Library For online database citations, the name and location of the subscribing library is no longer required.
- Continuous Pagination If the page numbers for articles in periodicals are not consecutive, only list the first page followed by a plus sign. For example, if the article starts on page 5, picks up on page 12, and finishes on page 13, list the pages as 5+. However, if the article starts on page 127 and continues without interruption until it ends on page 141, list the pages as 127 - 141.
- Indicate When Data is Missing In some cases, a lack of data must be indicated by the appropriate abbreviation. If there is no date of publication, for example, use n.d. where the date would have gone. Use n.p. for no publisher or no place of publication and use n. pag. for no page numbers. We have added many notes on the MLA templates to try to clarify these situations.
