Books are easy to cite. Pick up a book and it’s self-explanatory: lots of pages between two hard or soft covers. Typically, a book contains a single work by a single author. Sometimes a book will have more than one author but will still be a single work written in collaboration; in these cases, the reader cannot tell who wrote what and it does not matter.

 

Collections or anthologies, on the other hand, contain more than one work either by the same author (collections) or by multiple authors (anthologies), and will have one or more editors. Still, a book’s a book. Easy.

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The examples below are arranged by type and cover the most common book-form sources.

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One author:

Fields 1, 2, 7, 8 of template. This is the simplest form.

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Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle. Mariner Books, 2012.

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Smith, Phillip. Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell, 2001.

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Two authors:

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Fields 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 of template. Note that field 5 (Version) adds information about the new edition.

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Smith, Philip, and Alexander Riley. Cultural Theory: An Introduction. 2nd edition,

Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.

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Three or more authors:

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Authors are Fields 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 of template. Note that field 5 (Version) adds information about the edition. The authors are Clifford G. Christians, Mark Fackler, Kathy Brittain Richardson, Peggy Kreshel, and Robert H. Woods, shortened to “et al.” after the first author, meaning “and others”

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Christians, Clifford G. et al. Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning. 10th edition,

Routledge, 2016.

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Corporate author (organization):

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Fields 1, 2, 7, 8 of template.

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Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice

Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. University of Washington Press, 2000.

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No author:

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Fields 2, 7, 8 of template.

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Pokemon: Official Nintendo Players Guide. Nintendo, 1998.

 

Edited book (anthology or collection):

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Fields 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 of template.

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Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, editors. The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. Shorter 8th edition, Norton, 2013.

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An individual work in an edited book (anthology or collection):

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Fields 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 of template. Note that now the first element is the author of the contained work. The editors of the container have now moved to field 4 as “Other contributors” and are listed by first name then last name. For more than two editors, list only the first and add “et al.”. Also note the addition of the page range for the work at the end, in field 9 (Location).

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Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature,

edited by Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine, shorter 8th edition, Norton, 2013, pp. 714-718.

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Translated book:

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Fields 1, 2, 4, 7, 8 of template. Note that field 4 adds the information about the translator or translators as “Other contributors”

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Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. Translated by Alan

Sheridan, Vintage, 1995.