How is MLA 9 different from APA?

MLA 9 uses the author's full name (Last, First) rather than initials, title case rather than sentence case, and arranges sources around the MLA container model — the work's title, then the larger container in italics, contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date and location (pages or URL).

How are multiple authors formatted?

The first author is inverted to Last, First. A second author follows as First Last after the word and. Three or more authors are shown as the first author followed by et al., per MLA 9.

Which entry types does it handle?

It supports @article (work in a journal container), @book, @incollection/@inbook (work in an edited book container), @inproceedings (work in proceedings), and @misc/@online for web sources, which receive a URL and an access date.

Why does it add an access date to web sources?

MLA 9 recommends an access date for online sources that may change, written as Accessed Day Month Year. The tool adds today's date as the access date for entries with a URL and no fixed publication source.

Is my bibliography sent anywhere?

No. The BibTeX is parsed and formatted entirely in your browser, so your reference data never leaves your device.

What is the BibTeX to MLA 9 Reference List?

Free in-browser BibTeX to MLA 9 converter. Formats each BibTeX entry as an MLA 9th edition Works Cited entry — author last-name-first, title-case titles, italic containers, volume and issue, page ranges and access dates for URLs. Runs entirely on your device. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

BibTeX to MLA 9 Reference List

Name: BibTeX to MLA 9 Reference List
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A BibTeX to MLA 9 converter turns exported @article{…} records into a properly formatted MLA 9th edition Works Cited list, following the modern MLA container model. It runs entirely in your browser, so your sources stay private while you get a clean, alphabetised, hanging-indent list ready to paste into your paper.

How it works

MLA 9 builds each entry from a sequence of core elements, each ending in the right punctuation:

Author. First author inverted to Last, First; a second author as First Last; three or more as First Author, et al.
Title of source in quotation marks for a work inside a container (an article, a chapter), or in italics for a standalone work (a book).
Container — the larger whole — in italics: the journal, the edited book, the proceedings, or the website.
Number — vol. X, no. Y for journals.
Publisher and publication date where applicable.
Location — the page range (pp. 45–58) or the URL, with an Accessed date for online sources.

The tool parses the BibTeX (decoding common LaTeX accents and respecting brace/quote-delimited values), maps each field to the right element, and alphabetises the list by the first author’s surname.

Example

@article{smith2021,
  author = {Smith, Jane and Doe, John},
  title  = {A Study of DNA Repair},
  journal= {Nature},
  year   = {2021}, volume = {12}, number = {3}, pages = {45--58}
}

becomes:

Smith, Jane, and John Doe. “A Study of DNA Repair.” Nature, vol. 12, no. 3, 2021, pp. 45–58.

Tips and notes

MLA uses title case; capitalise the major words of your titles in the BibTeX and the tool preserves them.
Use -- for page ranges in BibTeX; it is converted to an en dash.
Web entries (@online/@misc with a url) receive an Accessed date set to today.

How MLA 9 differs from earlier MLA editions

MLA 9 introduced the container model, which replaced the previous style of memorising a separate template for each source type (book, journal, website). Instead of learning different formats, you fill in a universal sequence of core elements: Author. Title. Container. Contributor information. Version. Number. Publisher. Publication date. Location. Not every element is present for every source — a standalone book has no container, for example — but the sequence and its punctuation are fixed. This makes MLA 9 considerably more consistent than MLA 7 or 8 when dealing with sources that don’t fit a neat category.

Entries the converter handles well and their quirks

BibTeX entry type	MLA 9 form	Notes
`@article`	Work in journal container	Volume and issue become `vol. X, no. Y`
`@book`	Standalone monograph	No container; publisher is prominent
`@incollection` / `@inbook`	Chapter in edited book	Editor appears as “Edited by” after the book title
`@inproceedings`	Paper in proceedings	Proceedings title is the container
`@online` / `@misc` with URL	Web source	Access date appended

Common BibTeX cleanup before converting

Braces around proper nouns. BibTeX lowercases title words unless they are protected by braces: write {Darwin} to keep the capital. The converter applies title case to the whole title, so braces help prevent over-lowercasing of names and acronyms.
Accented characters. If your BibTeX uses LaTeX accent macros such as \'e for é, the converter decodes the most common ones. Using UTF-8 characters directly is more reliable.
Multiple authors. Separate authors with and, not a comma: Smith, Jane and Doe, John.