How to Reference Website Articles

An MLA research paper is the common requirement for high school students.

It is easy to look up information online. You get instant results. Because of this, more people are using articles found online in their research. But when they write their papers, they often aren't quite sure how to reference a website, since it was not from a printed magazine. Major style guides do provide answers for how to reference a website.

Things You'll Need

• Full URL of the article
• Name of the article
• Name of the author
• Date the article was written
• Date you use the article
• Required style of citation (i.e. MLA research paper, APA research paper, etc.)

Instructions

1. Give yourself three lines at the end of your paper to reference each article.

2. Begin with the last name of the author of the article followed by the first name. A comma should separate the two. An example would be Bodine, Alicia. After the name, place a comma and write the day, month and year the article was published. For example: Bodine, Alicia, 3 March 2007.

3. Finish off your first line with the title of the article. Your first line should look something like this: Bodine, Alicia, 3 March 2007, "How to Adopt a Cat."

4. Place the full URL of the article on the second line. Using the copy-and-paste feature on your computer will make this easy. Remember, don't put just the URL of the homepage. You must put the URL that brings up the article.

5. Finish your website article reference by placing the date you used the article for your research. The third line should look something like this: Accessed 19 February 2009.

Tips & Warnings

• Anytime you use information from an article in your paper, you must cite it.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Referencing a website