How to Cite Multiple Authors in MLA 9th Edition

To cite multiple authors in MLA 9th edition, count the names on the source. With two authors, the works-cited entry gives both: the first name reversed, then a comma and the word and, then the second name in normal order (Dorris, Michael, and Louise Erdrich.). With three or more, give only the first author, reversed, followed by a comma and et al. (Burdick, Anne, et al.). The in-text citation follows the same count: (Dorris and Erdrich 112) for two authors and (Burdick et al. 42) for three or more.

Those two rules settle most entries. The rest of this guide covers the details that cost marks: where the commas go, why et al. stays out of your sentences, coauthors who share a surname, editors and translators, and how to order several works by the same lead author.

The official MLA 9 rule for multiple authors

The MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021) handles authors by count, and the count is the same in the works-cited list and in the in-text citation. The Douglas College MLA 9 guide quotes the Handbook's two-author rule from page 111: include the authors "in the order in which they are presented in the work," "reverse the first of the names," "follow it with a comma and the word and, and give the second name in the normal order."

Three things in that table are easy to miss.

First, only the first author's name is reversed. The MLA explains why in an Ask the MLA answer on inverted names: the entry is alphabetized under the first author's surname, and later names read more easily in normal order.

Second, the parenthetical citation uses the word and. MLA does not use the ampersand that APA puts between author names, so (Dorris & Erdrich 112) is wrong in MLA. If you also write in APA, the APA 7 guide to multiple authors explains where the two styles part ways: APA switches to et al. at three authors too, but in the reference list it names up to 20.

Third, there is no comma between the name and the page number: (Burdick et al. 42).

Two authors in MLA 9

A two-author entry names both people, in the order the source prints them. That order is the one on the title page or the article byline. Do not alphabetize the coauthors, even when the second author's surname comes first in the alphabet.

Format:

Last Name, First Name, and First Name Last Name. Title of Source. Publisher, Year.

Example (book):

Dorris, Michael, and Louise Erdrich. The Crown of Columbus. HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.

In-text: (Dorris and Erdrich 112), or in your sentence, Dorris and Erdrich describe... (112).

The comma after "Michael" looks optional, but the MLA treats it as required. Its answer on the comma with and gives the reason: without it, a reader can misread the first name as "Michael and Louise Erdrich Dorris." The comma marks where the reversed name ends.

The first time you name the authors in your prose, give their full names. After that, surnames are enough. The Douglas College guide sources that rule to page 232 of the 9th edition. So the first mention reads Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, and every later mention reads Dorris and Erdrich.

Three or more authors: when to use et al.

At three authors, MLA 9 stops listing names. The works-cited entry gives the first author, reversed, followed by a comma and et al., which abbreviates the Latin et alii, "and others." The Douglas College in-text guide cites page 232 of the 9th edition for the parenthetical form: the first author's surname, then et al., then the page.

Format:

Last Name, First Name, et al. Title of Source. Publisher, Year.

Example (book):

Burdick, Anne, et al. Digital_Humanities. MIT Press, 2012.

In-text: (Burdick et al. 42).

The punctuation of et al. is where most errors land:

• Period after al. only. "Et" is a whole Latin word, so it takes no period. "Al." is short for alii, so it does. Write et al., never et. al.
• Comma before et al. in the works-cited list, when the name is reversed. Burdick, Anne, et al. The MLA's answer on commas with et al. explains that the comma tells the reader the abbreviation attaches to the whole name, Burdick, Anne.
• No comma in the parenthetical citation. (Burdick et al. 42), because the name is in normal order there.
• Set in roman type. The MLA's answer on italicizing et al. says to italicize it only when you discuss the abbreviation as a term, as this sentence does with et al. In citations and entries it stays roman.

Keep et al. out of your sentences

The parenthetical citation uses et al. Your own prose does not. The MLA's answer on naming three or more authors in the text says to reserve et al. for the works-cited list and parenthetical citations. In the text, spell out all the names, or give the first author followed by "and others." The Douglas College guide quotes the 9th edition (p. 232) allowing "and colleagues" as well.

So for the Burdick book, a sentence can name every author on the title page, or read "Burdick and colleagues argue" or "Burdick and others argue."

"Burdick et al. argue" is the form to avoid. You will see it on the Purdue OWL in-text page, which writes "According to Franck et al." in its example sentence, and in plenty of published essays. The MLA's own guidance and the 9th edition wording quoted above both point to "and colleagues" or "and others." If an instructor has told you to follow Purdue, ask which they prefer, and keep it consistent through the paper.

Worked examples

Each example below is a real entry taken from the MLA Style Center, the Purdue OWL or a university MLA 9 guide. Page numbers in the in-text citations are placeholders showing the form.

1. A book by two authors

Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

In-text: (Gillespie and Lerner 27). This is the Purdue OWL's two-author book example.

2. A journal article by two authors

Anderson, Julie, and Daniel Murphy. "Fleeing Feeling." Victorian Zeitgeist, vol. 3, no. 4, Fall 2017, pp. 134-47.

In-text: (Anderson and Murphy 140). The author pattern is identical for articles and books. Only the elements after the title change; the MLA 9 journal article guide covers the container, volume, issue and DOI.

3. A book by three or more authors

Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Utah State UP, 2004.

In-text: (Wysocki et al. 15). The entry names the first author only. "UP" is the MLA abbreviation for University Press, which the Douglas College guide sources to page 172 of the 9th edition.

4. Two authors who share a surname

Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Age of Reason Begins: A History of European Civilization in the Period of Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Rembrandt, Galileo, and Descartes. Simon and Schuster, 1961. Vol. 7 of The Story of Civilization.

Give the full name of each author, surname included. According to the MLA's answer on coauthors with a shared last name each author is treated as an individual, so "Durant, Will, and Ariel." is wrong. In-text: (Durant and Durant 214), or name them in your sentence as Will Durant and Ariel Durant.

5. Two editors

Rose, Shirley K., and Irwin Weiser, editors. The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher. Heinemann, 1999.

In-text: (Rose and Weiser 9). Editors follow the author pattern, with the role label after the names. The label is plural for two or more editors. With three or more editors, use the first editor and et al.: Last Name, First Name, et al., editors.

6. Three or more translators

Balibar, Étienne. Politics and the Other Scene. Translated by Christine Jones et al., Verso, 2002.

In-text: (Balibar 88). The three-name threshold covers translators and other contributors too, per the MLA's answer on et al. for translators. No comma before et al. here: Christine Jones is in normal order, and "Christine Jones et al." reads as "Christine Jones and others."

7. A chapter by two authors in a book with three or more editors

Dewar, James A., and Peng Hwa Ang. "The Cultural Consequences of Printing and the Internet." Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, edited by Sabrina Alcorn Baron et al., U of Massachusetts P / Center for the Book, Library of Congress, 2007, pp. 365-77.

In-text: (Dewar and Ang 370). The two chapter authors open the entry; the book's editors sit in the "edited by" slot, cut down to one name and et al. The slash between the two publishers is the MLA's form for copublished books.

8. A chapter by one author in a coauthored book

Althusser, Louis. "Marx's Critique." Reading Capital, by Althusser and Étienne Balibar, translated by Ben Brewster, Verso, 2009, pp. 182-200.

When the book's authors each wrote separate chapters, cite the chapter under the person who wrote it, and name the book's authors after "by." Balibar's chapter in the same book gets its own entry, beginning Balibar, Étienne. If you need several chapters from one book, the MLA 9 book guide covers cross-referencing to a single entry for the whole book.

9. A lead author whose name is not reversed

Liu Chang et al. "Cong Changchungong dao Zhongcuigong." Zijincheng, vol. 175, 2009, pp. 14-23.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean names usually give the surname first already, so the entry does not reverse them. With no reversed name, there is no comma before et al. In-text: (Liu et al. 17).

Ordering several works by the same authors

Once your list contains more than one work by the same lead author, the order depends on who else is on each byline. Three rules from the MLA's answer on single-author and coauthored works cover it.

A work by the author alone comes before work by the same author with a coauthor.

Rappaport, Joanne. The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial Kingdom of Granada. Duke UP, 2014. Rappaport, Joanne, and Tom Cummins. Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes. Duke UP, 2012.

The 2014 book comes first even though the 2012 book is older. MLA does not order by date.

Several two-author works by the same lead author go in order of the coauthor's surname.

Ender, Evelyne, and Serafina Lawrence. "Inside a Red Cover: Proust and the Art of the Book." Proust and the Arts, edited by Christie McDonald and François Proulx, Cambridge UP, 2015, pp. 191-212. Ender, Evelyne, and Deidre Shauna Lynch. "On 'Learning to Read.'" PMLA, vol. 130, no. 3, May 2015, pp. 539-45.

Lawrence comes before Lynch.

A two-author work and a work with three or more authors go in title order.

Martinsen, Rob A., and Scott M. Alvord. "On the Relationship between L2 Pronunciation and Culture." Spanish in Context, vol. 9, no. 3, 2012, pp. 443-65. Martinsen, Rob A., et al. "Perceived Foreign Accent: Extended Stays Abroad, Level of Instruction, and Motivation." Foreign Language Annals, vol. 47, no. 1, 2014, pp. 66-78.

"On the Relationship" sorts before "Perceived," so the et al. entry comes second. The MLA 9 alphabetizing guide covers the wider rules, including skipping A, An and The at the start of a title.

When three hyphens replace the names

Three hyphens stand in for an author name that repeats exactly. For coauthored work, "exactly" means the same people in the same order. The MLA's answer on same lead author, different coauthors shows the case where it works:

Taylor, Sandy, et al. "Collaboration in the Twenty-First Century." Journal of Collaborative Writing, vol. 20, no. 1, 2017, pp. 15-25. ---. "Writing Together." Studies in Joint Scholarship, vol. 10, no. 2, 2017, pp. 75-85.

Both articles have the same three authors in the same order, so the second entry uses three hyphens.

When the lead author is the same but the coauthors differ, or the same coauthors appear in a different order, each entry must repeat "Taylor, Sandy, et al." in full. The two entries look identical at the start, but the authorship behind them is different.

Then the in-text citation needs a short title, because "(Taylor et al.)" alone points at several entries:

(Taylor et al., "Collaboration") (Taylor et al., "Cowriting") (Taylor et al., "Groups")

The comma between the names and the short title belongs there: it appears in the MLA's example, and the Douglas College guide sources the short-title rule to page 235 of the 9th edition.

Special cases

Two different authors share a surname

This is a different problem from example 4. When your list has works by two unrelated people named Miller, the parenthetical citation needs more than the surname. Add the first initial, or the full first name if the initials match too. The Douglas College guide sources this to page 234 of the 9th edition, and the Purdue OWL example reads (R. Miller 12) and (A. Miller 46).

You coauthored the source

Build the works-cited entry as you would for any coauthored work, with your name where the byline puts it. In your prose, the MLA's answer on referring to your coauthored work allows first or third person for yourself, and third person for your coauthors: "In 'Fleeing Feeling,' Daniel Murphy and I discuss..." is fine.

Your guide says you may list every author

The University of Lethbridge's MLA 9 page on multiple authors notes that with more than three authors "it is also acceptable to include all of the authors' or editors' names" in both the in-text citation and the works-cited entry, as long as you are consistent. The MLA Style Center pages fetched for this guide show only the et al. form for entries and parenthetical citations. If your instructor or department style sheet asks for every name, follow it. If nothing says so, et al. from three authors is the default.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Using the ampersand. (Dorris & Erdrich 112) is APA habit. MLA writes and.
• Dropping the comma before and in the works-cited entry. Dorris, Michael and Louise Erdrich runs the names together. Write Dorris, Michael, and Louise Erdrich.
• Reversing every name. Only the first author's name is reversed: Dorris, Michael, and Louise Erdrich, never Dorris, Michael, and Erdrich, Louise.
• Alphabetizing the coauthors. Keep the order printed on the source. Reordering also changes where the entry files in your list.
• Writing et. al. The period goes after al. only.
• Starting et al. at two authors. MLA names both authors of a two-author work every time. Et al. begins at three.
• Putting et al. in your sentence. Write Burdick and colleagues, or name everyone, and keep et al. for the parentheses.
• Using three hyphens for a different author set. Taylor, Sandy, et al. repeated over different coauthors stays written out in full.
• Leaving out the short title. If two entries begin with the same names, the parenthetical citation needs a short title to tell them apart.

Quick-reference table