A journal is usually a scholarly or professional publication that comes out several times a year. Each issue is identified by a volume number and an issue number (or sometimes a month or season).

 

The basic pattern is Author Name. "Article Title in quotes." Journal Title in italics Volume number.Issue number (Year): Pages. Format.

Author lastname, Author firstname. "Article Title." Journal Title Volume.Issue (Year): Pages. Format.

 

Journal Article with Volume and Issue Number

 Aspiz, Harold. “Walt Whitman: The Spermatic Imagination.” American Literature      
            56.3 (1984): 379-95. Print.

 

Journal Article with Author

 Craner, Paul M.  "New Tool for an Ancient Art: The Computer and Music."
          Computers and the Humanities  25 (1991): 303-13. Print.

 

Article from Journal with More Than One Series

 Striner, Richard. “Political Newtonism: The Cosmic Model of Politics in Europe and
           America.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 52.4 (199): 583-608. Print.

 

 Article from Journal with Old and New Series

 Helming, Steven. “A Martyr to Happiness: Why Adorno Matters.” Kenyon Review
          ns 28.4 (2006): 156-72. Print.

Note: Indicate the series with ns (new series) or os (old series).

 

Special Issue of a Journal

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Identities. Spec. issue
          of Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992): 625-884. Print.

 Symposium Issue: Race, Ethnicity, and Civic Identity in the Americas. Spec. issue
          of American Literary History 17.3 (2005): 419-644. Print.

 

Article from a library database

Gay, Peter. “On Not Psychoanalyzing Virginia Woolf.” American Scholar 71.2
          (Spring 2002): 71-75. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Aug. 2009.

Note: Periodical articles from online databases are treated the same as print periodicals but the medium is “web”, not “print”. An article on the web may not include page numbers. If pagination is not available use “n.pag”.

 

Article from a web journal

Armstrong, Grace. Rev. of Fortune’s Faces: The Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of Contingency, by Daniel
          Heller-Roazen. Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature 6.1 (2002): n. pag. Web 5 June 2008.

 

For more about citing sources in MLA format, see the MLA Citation Guide.