When an article is missing a named author, MLA style asks you to treat the title as the star of the show. Think of it like a neighborhood potluck where Aunt Carol forgot to put her name on her famous brownies. You wouldn’t say “Aunt Carol’s Brownies” if you don’t know who made them—you’d say “The Fudgy Walnut Brownies” instead. That’s your citation anchor now: the title.
In your Works Cited page, you’ll list the article by its title first. If the title starts with “A,” “An,” or “The,” skip that word when alphabetizing. So, “The Art of Napping” gets filed under A, not T. It’s like organizing your spice rack—ignore the “the” and go straight to the good stuff.
How the Citation Actually Looks
Here’s an example to save you from squinting at a blank page. Imagine you found an online article called “10 Ways to Make Your Cat Love You.” No author? No problem. In MLA, you’d write:
“10 Ways to Make Your Cat Love You.” Website Name, Day Month Year, URL.
Notice the quotation marks around the title, the period inside the last quote, and the italicized website name. It looks neat, like a tidy bookshelf. And yes, you’re done—no frantic Googling for a ghostwriter.
