Both offer guidance on how to clearly document and format references to other works like books, articles, and websites. Moreover, both have clearly defined rules for how to cite YouTube videos in particular. The MLA Handbook is published by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and is most commonly used for academic writing in the humanities. The current version of the handbook is the eighth edition which was issued back in 2016. Style manual aficionados can rejoice, though, because the ninth edition is due out in April 2021! Instead of following MLA rules, academic writers in the social and behavioral science fields more commonly use the APA style from the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA’s current style manual is The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition. Just like the MLA, the APA has rules about how to cite YouTube videos in a scholarly article. We’ll cover both styles below.
How to Cite a YouTube Video in MLA
The MLA provides a template of the core elements found in citations. Most sources have common attributes, like an author, a title, and a date of publication. The MLA template of core elements lists those elements in a certain order, and that’s how you determine which elements to list in a citation and in what order.
Step-by-Step Instructions for Citing a YouTube Video in MLA
An MLA citation of a YouTube video will include the following information in this order: For YouTube videos that were uploaded by the creator, a citation could look like this: Here’s another example: What if the video was uploaded by someone different than the video’s creator? Here’s an example of a citation where the uploader and creator are not the same. Conveniently, the MLA provides an interactive practice template to help you get your citations right. While they say the template “is not a citation generator,” it should be good enough to help you to create a citation which you can then double-check against the MLA Handbook.
How to Cite a YouTube Video in APA
The APA follows slightly different formatting for citing YouTube videos, and depending on the video you want to cite, you might have to do a little extra research.
Step-by-Step Instructions for Citing a YouTube Video in APA
An APA citation of a YouTube video will include the following information in this order: Note: APA style requires that you indent all lines after the first line in your citation. So, here’s what the citation could look like in APA style with the author’s real name and screen name: A YouTube citation where the uploader/creator is an organization might look like this: If you want to cite an entire YouTube channel in APA style, follow this example: The “n.d.” in the examples above stands for “no date,“ since YouTube channels don’t have a specific date attached to them and the content of the channel will likely change as time goes by.
Argh, It’s Too Confusing!
Properly recording and formatting citations can be a beast of a job, and sometimes the proper format isn’t obvious for the source you want to cite. Luckily, there are reference management tools to help you, and almost all modern word processors have built-in functionality to automatically format bibliographies. Once you get a few citations under your belt, your confidence will increase, and you’ll be citing YouTube sources in your sleep!
