Format
Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Periodical, Publisher, Publication Date, URL. Date of access.
Example
Whitbrook, James. "Steven Universe Tells Us That the Answer to All Our Questions Is Love-But It's Also Fandom." Io9, Gawker, 11 Jan. 2016, io9.gizmodo.com/steven-universe-tells-us-that-the-answer-to-all-our-que-1752311132. 12 Jan. 2016.
Format
Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Periodical, volume number, issue number, Year of Publication, pp. pages. Database Name, DOI or URL. Date of access.
Example
Weigel, David. “The Horrible Truth About Super-Science.” Reason, vol. 39, no. 3, July 2007, pp. 54–59. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=25340945&site=ehost-live. 12 Oct. 2019.
Format
Last Name, First Name. "Title of Article." Title of Periodical, volume number, issue number, Year of Publication, pp. pages. Database Name, DOI or URL. Date of access.
Example
Bulfin, Ailise. "The Natural Catastrophe In Late Victorian Popular Fiction: 'How Will The World End?'." Critical Survey, vol. 27, no. 2 2015, pp. 81-101. Academic Search Complete. doi:10.3167/cs.2015.270207. 12 Sept. 2016.
Format
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.
Example
Lowder, James. Beyond the Wall Exploring George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Dragons. BenBella, 2012.
Format
Last Name, First Name and First Name, Last Name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.
Example
Gaiman, Neil, and Yoshitaka Amano. The Dream Hunters. Titan, 2000.
Format
Last Name, First Name, et al. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication Date.
Example
Burns, Robert, et al. Poetry. T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1896.
Format
Title of Book. Publisher, Year of Publication.
Example
The Encyclopedia Americana. International ed. Grolier, 1990.
Format
Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site. Version number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), URL,DOI, or permalink. Date of access.
Example
CNNMoney. Cable News Network, money.cnn.com. 05 June 2015.
Format
Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). "Title of Article." Name of Site. Version number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available), URL,DOI, or permalink. Date of access.
Example
"Dragon Age RPG | The Official Dragon Age Tabletop Roleplaying Game." Dragon Age RPG, greenronin.com/dragonagerpg. 05 June 2015.
If you wish to quote from a source within the source you are using, you must show that you are quoting from an indirect source. This is done by writing "qtd. in" in from of the in-text citation.
Example
Smith argues that Palpatine "addresses the Senate in tones that make us think of the kind of promises that Octavian would have made on receiving extraordinary powers designed to safeguard the Republic" (qtd. in Charles 284).
Author
We do not recommend treating the AI tool as an author. This recommendation follows the policies developed by various publishers, including the MLA’s journal PMLA.
Title of Source
Describe what was generated by the AI tool. This may involve including information about the prompt in the Title of Source element if you have not done so in the text.
Title of Container
Use the Title of Container element to name the AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT).
Version
Name the version of the AI tool as specifically as possible. For example, the examples in this post were developed using ChatGPT 3.5, which assigns a specific date to the version, so the Version element shows this version date.
Publisher
Name the company that made the tool.
Date
Give the date the content was generated.
Location
Give the general URL for the tool.1
Works Cited:
Kiernan, L. (2023, April 12). How do I cite Generative AI in MLA style?. MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/
While the green light in The Great Gatsby might be said to chiefly symbolize four main things: optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness (“Describe the symbolism”), arguably the most important—the one that ties all four themes together—is greed.
“Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.
When asked to describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby, ChatGPT provided a summary about optimism, the unattainability of the American dream, greed, and covetousness. However, when further prompted to cite the source on which that summary was based, it noted that it lacked “the ability to conduct research or cite sources independently” but that it could “provide a list of scholarly sources related to the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” (“In 200 words”).
“In 200 words, describe the symbolism of the green light in The Great Gatsby” follow-up prompt to list sources. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 9 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.
Use a description of the prompt, followed by the AI tool, version, and date created:
If you ask a generative AI tool to create a work, like a poem, how you cite it will depend on whether you assign a title to it.
If you ask ChatGPT to write a villanelle titled “The Sunflower” that—you guessed it!—describes a sunflower and then quote it in your text. Your works-cited-list entry might look like this:
“The Sunflower” villanelle about a sunflower. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.
If you did not title the work, incorporate part of or all of the first line into the description of the work in the Title of Source element:
“Upon the shore . . .” Shakespearean sonnet about seeing the ocean. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat.
You should also take care to vet the secondary sources cited by a generative AI tool—with the caveat that AI tools do not always cite sources or, when they do, do not always indicate precisely what a given source has contributed. If you cite an AI summary that includes sources and do not go on to consult those sources yourself, we recommend that you acknowledge secondary sources in your work.
For example, let’s say that you ask Bing AI to explain the concept of the political unconscious, citing sources, and it provides the following answer:
Let’s say that you then decide to quote from the final sentence. You need to click through to the source listed in the note in order to get more information than just a URL for the source. There, you will read the following:
Now, you can treat Oxford Reference as your source since Bing AI was merely a research conduit to the source. If for some reason you want to treat a source cited in a generative AI tool as an indirect source–and you know it is, in fact, the source for the information provided by the AI, follow the guidance in section 6.77 of the MLA Handbook.