MLA Citation
MLA 9th Edition Guide
conference

How to Cite a Conference Paper in MLA 9.

Conference papers in MLA 9 are cited similarly to book chapters — the paper title is in quotation marks and the proceedings volume is italicised as the container. Here is the format with examples.

Updated January 15, 2024

MLA 9 conference paper citation format

Author Last, First. “Paper Title.” Proceedings Title or Conference Name, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. #–#.

Example:

Nguyen, Thanh. “Deep Learning Approaches to Natural Language Processing.” Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023, pp. 1234–1245. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.100.


Paper without published proceedings

Author Last, First. “Paper Title.” Conference Name, Location, Day Month Year.

Example:

Patel, Ananya. “Climate Equity in Urban Design.” Urban Design International Conference, Chicago, 18 Oct. 2022.


Conference paper from online repository (arXiv, ACL Anthology)

Author Last, First. “Paper Title.” Repository Name, Year, URL or DOI.


Key rules

  • Paper title in quotation marks
  • Proceedings/conference name italicised
  • Include editors of the proceedings if listed (“edited by…”)
  • Add DOI or URL if available — always preferred for online proceedings
  • Page range: “pp. 1234–1245”

In-text citation

(Nguyen 1237) or (Patel)

Ready to generate your citation?

Free. No login. Accurate MLA 9 in seconds.

Generate a citation.