It is widely acknowledged that when we are writing content, if we need to cite some words, phrases, or sentences written in other books, we should give out the citing information, otherwise we may get into a copyright dispute. So how should we cite a book in our articles? You can do it in two forms, including the MLA and APA styles. In this article, I will introduce how to cite a book in these two formats separately.
1. How to Cite A Book in MLA Style
Contents
In a citation MLA style, you need to include 6 elements, which include the author’s name, the full title of the book, the publisher’s city, the name of the publisher, the year of the book’s publication, and its medium.
These 6 elements are placed in the order like this (pay attention to the punctuation marks):
Last Name, First Name. Book Title. Publisher City: Publisher Name, Year Published. Medium.
Please notice that the name in an MLA citation style should be written in a reserved way, which means that you should put the last name before the first name. If the author’s name has a suffix, please write it in the format like “Dr.”, “Jr.” (don’t forget the full stop).
If there is more than one author, you can write all of them, with commas separating them. And use an “and” before the last author’s name.
e.g.: Author 1, Author 2, and Author 3. Book Title. Publisher City: Publisher Name, Year Published. Medium.
Or you can simply include one author and then use an “et al.” to end.
e.g.: Author 1, et al. Book Title. Publisher City: Publisher Name, Year Published. Medium.
Title of the Book
The title of the book should be written in its full name. If it has a subtitle, please include it here as well, but use a colon after it (unless it ends with a question mark or exclamation point). After entering the whole title of the book, you need to italicize it.
Publisher Information
You can find the publication information of the book’s title page or the copyright page. Just remember to use a colon after writing the publication city. If there is more than one city, you only need to write the first one.
Then when you write the name of the publisher, you should abbreviate it properly. Then end it with a comma. Finally, add the medium or a period when the book is published.
2. How to Cite A Book in APA Style
The citation format of the APA style is slightly different from the MLA style. But it also has some common elements that should be included when you use APA style to cite a book, which are the author’s name, the publication year, the book title, edition version (vol information), and the publisher’s information.
e.g.: Smith, T., & Williams, B. M. (2019). The citation manual for students: A quick guide (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
It should start with the author’s last name, then follow the initials. After this, use a pair of brackets to include the year. Then you should write the full book title. Similarly, you need to italicize it and also capitalize the first word or other nouns that need to be capitalized.
If the book is a vol of an edition, please include such information after the title in a pair of brackets as well. Finally, like using the MLA style, state the publisher’s information after the book title. Then it is all done.
Cite An Online Book
If you find the references online and has to cite an online book, you just need to follow the example here:
Last name, Initials. (Year). Book title [ebook format information]. Retrieved from URL
That’s how to cite a book inside your article while editing to avoid copying infringement. For yourself to protect the content you have created, you can convert the TXT or Word document to PDF after finishing the article, because PDF cannot be edited easily.
In Conclusion
If you have to cite content that has been written in published books, please follow the above tips to cite them correctly to make your articles look more authoritative. Never try to copy others’ content because this is not a legal behavior, and it is an impolite manner.