How to Cite Multiple Works by the Same Author in MLA (9th Edition)

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Published July 4, 2026

You are quoting two Toni Morrison novels in the same essay, or three articles by the same researcher. Two problems appear at once. In the works cited list, do you really retype the author’s name for every entry? And in the body, a plain (Morrison 27) is suddenly ambiguous — 27 of which book? MLA 9 has a specific mechanism for each: three hyphens in the works cited list, and shortened titles in the in-text citations. Both are small, both are precise, and both are easy to get subtly wrong.

The shortest answer: give the author’s name in full in the first works-cited entry only, then replace it with three hyphens and a period (---.) in every consecutive entry by exactly the same author, alphabetizing those entries by title. In-text, put a comma after the author’s last name and add a shortened title before the page number, with no comma before the page: (Frye, Anatomy 237).

The three hyphens rule in works cited

The MLA Handbook, 9th edition (sec. 5.126), says that three em dashes or three hyphens can take the place of identical names in consecutive works-cited-list entries. In practice: write the author’s name in full in the first entry, and in each entry after it, type three unspaced hyphens followed by a period, then continue with the title. The standard handbook example:

Haynes, Stephen R. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. Oxford UP, 2002.

---. The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation. Oxford UP, 2012.

The dashes stand for exactly the same name as the entry above — the reader substitutes “Haynes, Stephen R.” mentally. Everything else in the entry follows the normal rules for the source type, whether that is a book, a journal article, or a website.

Hyphens or a real 3-em dash? Either. The MLA Style Center’s answer is direct: “The MLA accepts manuscripts with either hyphens or 3-em dashes. If an author uses three hyphens in an entry, we convert them to a 3-em dash before publication.” For a student paper, three hyphens are the practical choice. One caution: word processors love to autocorrect three hyphens into an en or em dash. If yours does, undo the autocorrection (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z immediately after it happens) or turn off the dash substitution — the MLA even has a post on fixing this in Microsoft Word.

Do not forget the period. The three hyphens end with a period, exactly as the name they replace would: ---. — then the title. If the same person served in a different role for one of the works, MLA puts a comma after the dashes and a label instead, for example ---, editor.

How to alphabetize works by the same author

Entries under the same name are alphabetized by title, ignoring an initial A, An, or The — but the article stays in the entry itself. Purdue OWL uses this Burke pair to show the pattern (publication details completed here):

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. U of California P, 1969.

---. A Rhetoric of Motives. U of California P, 1969.

A Grammar of Motives files under G, A Rhetoric of Motives under R, so Grammar comes first even though both titles begin with “A.” The most common ordering error is chronological: listing the earliest publication first is an APA habit, and in MLA it is simply wrong. Publication year plays no role in the order.

MLA in-text citation for the same author

When your works cited list contains two or more works by one author, the MLA Handbook (sec. 6.8) tells you to put a comma after the author’s last name and add the title — in full if it is brief, otherwise in shortened form — before the page number. There is no comma between the title and the page:

(Frye, Anatomy 237)

(Durant and Durant, Age 214-48)

If you name the author in your prose, the parenthetical carries only the title and page:

As Frye argues in a later work, the pattern inverts (Double Vision 85).

The punctuation is unforgiving in exactly two places. Comma after the last name: yes. Comma before the page number: no. So (Morrison, Beloved 27) is correct, and (Morrison, Beloved, 27) is not. Note also that MLA does not use the year as its standard way to tell works apart in-text — that is APA’s system, covered below. (Only when two works by the same author share a title does MLA add a bracketed extra element such as an edition.)

How to shorten a title in MLA

MLA’s guidance is that a shortened title should consist of the beginning words of the title up to at least the first noun. Anatomy of Criticism becomes Anatomy; “The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All” becomes “Uses of Poverty” (drop an initial A, An, or The: the shortened title must begin with the word by which the entry is alphabetized in the works cited list — which is why the handbook shortens “The Double Vision” to (Double Vision 85), with no “The”).

The shortened title keeps the formatting of the full title. A book, film, or other self-contained work stays italicized: (Morrison, Beloved 27). An article, chapter, short story, or webpage keeps its quotation marks: (Haynes, “Education Reform” 12). Students most often drop the formatting altogether, leaving a bare word that looks like part of the sentence rather than a title.

Same author, different coauthors

The dashes replace only exactly the same name or names in the same order. If Sandy Taylor wrote one paper with two colleagues and another paper with two different colleagues, the works cited list spells the authorship out both times — per the MLA Style Center, “the names cannot be replaced with three hyphens in listings after the first since the authorship is different.” Both entries begin:

Taylor, Sandy, et al.

Since both entries also begin identically in-text, the citations are distinguished by short title, as with a single author:

(Taylor et al., “Collaboration”)

(Taylor et al., “Cowriting”)

The same logic applies in reverse: an author’s solo works and coauthored works are different authorships, so a solo entry never lends its dashes to a coauthored one. And when there is no personal author at all — an organization, or an anonymous work — different rules apply entirely; see the guide to MLA citations with no author. For the et al. threshold itself, see MLA citations with multiple authors.

MLA vs APA: title versus year

The two systems solve the same problem with different levers, and mixing them is the root of most errors on this page. The full comparison lives in MLA vs APA, but for repeated authors the contrast is sharp:

APA never uses dashes: the name is written out in every reference-list entry, and the works are ordered by publication year (undated works first, in-press last). Because APA in-text citations are author-date, two works from different years need no title at all — the year does the distinguishing. Only when author and year are both identical does APA add lowercase letters after the year, assigned by the works’ alphabetical-by-title order in the reference list. If you catch yourself sorting an MLA works cited list by year, or writing a year into an MLA parenthetical, you are running APA firmware.

Heads-up: the dashes may be on the way out

An MLA Style Center post dated 10 June 2026 flags an accessibility problem: screen readers handle a run of dashes poorly, so future editions of the handbook “will no longer recommend using dashes or hyphens” and will instead advise writers to “repeat names in full in the Author element.” For now, ninth-edition style — the three hyphens described on this page — remains fully acceptable, and it is what instructors grading against MLA 9 expect. But if your instructor or publisher asks you to repeat the name in every entry, that is not wrong; it is where MLA is heading.

Common mistakes

Ordering the works by publication year. MLA alphabetizes a same-author cluster by title, ignoring an initial A, An, or The. Chronological ordering is APA’s rule, and it is the single most common crossover error here.

A comma before the page number. (Morrison, Beloved, 27) is wrong. The comma sits between author and title only: (Morrison, Beloved 27).

A bare short title with no formatting. The shortened title keeps its italics or quotation marks from the works cited list. (Morrison, Beloved 27) with roman “Beloved” points at nothing.

Dashes standing in for a different authorship. Three hyphens replace exactly the same name(s) in the same order. Same lead author, different coauthors: write the names out again, every time.

Hyphens autocorrected into a dash. Type --- and check that your word processor left it alone. Three hyphens or a true 3-em dash are both accepted; a single en dash is neither.

No period after the hyphens. The dashes replace the name, and the name ends with a period: ---. then the title.

Reusing dashes across a page break in your head, not on the page. The dashes refer to the entry directly above. If another author’s entry alphabetizes between two works by your author, the cluster is broken and the name must be repeated — this happens when you misalphabetize, so fix the order first.

Every entry you build with the citation generator follows the base MLA 9 rules; the same-author machinery on this page is a manual pass you make once the list is assembled and sorted.

The principle behind all of it: the works cited list avoids repeating what the reader just read, and the in-text citation adds exactly enough — a comma and a short title — to make one work distinguishable from its siblings. Replace only what is truly identical; distinguish by title, not by year.

Editorial methodology and sources