How to Cite a Newspaper Article in an Essay

Updated April 17, 2017
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Various styles of writing provide different guidelines for citing a newspaper that you reference or quote in your essay. Citing a print paper will require you to note which pages the article appears on, while depending on your style guide, a Web source will require the URL or access date.

American Psychological Association

To cite a newspaper article in APA, include both the name of the article and the publication in which it appears. Also list all pages on which the article is found after the publication name:

Jones, M. (2006, March 14). Doctors disappear in police SNAFU. The London Star, pp. A1, A3-A4.

Multiple authors are separated by commas and ampersands in APA:

Jones, M., & Noble, D. (2008, July 5). Britons unite! The London Star, p. A2.

If taken from an online version of a newspaper, the URL is used in place of the page numbers:

Pinchevsky, T. (2015, April 14). Who will rule the NHL now? The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-will-rule-the-nhl-now-1429030826?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Modern Language Association

In MLA style, article titles are placed in quotes. The date is included after the name of the publication, and the type of publication -- print or Web -- is placed after the date and page info:

Jones, Martha. "Doctors disappear in police SNAFU." The London Star 14 March 2006: A1, A3-A4. Print.

If a citation includes multiple authors, authors past the first are listed firstname lastname:

Jones, Martha, and Donna Noble. "Britons unite!" The London Star 5 July 2008: A2. Print.

A Web citation doesn't include URL, but must include the last date you accessed the article:

Pinchevsky, Tal. "Who will rule the NHL now?" The Wall Street Journal 14 April 2015. Web. 14 April 2015.

In-Text Citations

To cite an APA source in text, note the author or authors' names, and the year -- but not month or day -- of the article: (Jones, 2006) If you directly quote a source, include the page number in the citation as well: (Jones & Noble, 2008, p. A2).

In MLA, in-text citations include the author name and page number, but no date: (Jones A3). Multiple authors are separated by "and" rather than an ampersand: (Jones and Noble A2).

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About the Author

Jon Zamboni began writing professionally in 2010. He has previously written for The Spiritual Herald, an urban health care and religious issues newspaper based in New York City, and online music magazine eBurban. Zamboni has a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from Wesleyan University.
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