Cite a YouTube video in MLA 9
Citing a YouTube video in MLA 9 catches students out because the uploader name takes the author slot, not the speaker on camera, and the upload date is the year. MLA 9 (2021) added explicit rules for video uploads, and they apply to channels regardless of how informal the content is.
MLA 9 rules for a YouTube video
- The channel name or uploader handle is the author, not the speaker on camera.
- Use the upload date as the publication date (year, month, day).
- Video title appears in italics; add [Video] in square brackets after the title.
- Container is YouTube; include the full watch URL.
- Timestamp the moment you reference in the in-text citation, not in the reference list.
- Format the access date as 'Accessed DD Mon. YYYY' at the end.
Worked example
MLA 9 · YouTube videoA real YouTube video formatted using the MLA 9 rules above.
Huberman, Andrew "How to write a research paper [Video]." *YouTube*, 8 Nov. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=example. Accessed 15 Jan. 2025.
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Citation fields
MLA 9 YouTube video citation guide
YouTube as a container in MLA 9
MLA 9 treats a YouTube video as a work inside the container YouTube, and the flexibility of the nine-element model means you have a real choice about who goes in the author slot. If your discussion focuses on the person who created the content, start with that creator. If it focuses on the video as an artefact uploaded by a channel, start with the channel as author. MLA explicitly allows either, as long as you are consistent and the first element matches your in-text citation. This is more permissive than APA, which fixes the uploader as author.
The standard entry is: Creator or Channel. "Title of the Video." YouTube, uploaded by Channel, Day Month Year, URL. Note that if you lead with a creator who is different from the uploading channel, MLA records the channel as an other contributor introduced by uploaded by. The video title sits in quotation marks as the title of the work, and YouTube is italicised as the container.
Uploader, date, and the clean URL
When the creator and the uploading channel are the same, you do not need the uploaded by element at all — just give the channel as author and move on to the date. When they differ, the uploaded by phrase keeps both pieces of information visible, which matters for videos where a named host appears on an institution's channel. The handle can stand in for a name when no real name is available, copied exactly as it appears including any unusual capitalisation.
The upload date is given in MLA's day-month-year order with the month abbreviated: 8 Nov. 2023. Use the canonical watch URL as the location element, stripped of any timestamp or playlist parameters, because the location should point to the whole work. A youtu.be short link works but the full youtube.com/watch address is clearer in a Works Cited list and is what most instructors expect to see.
Timestamps and in-text citation
MLA in-text citations are author-page, but a video has no pages, so MLA 9 lets you cite a timestamp in place of a page number, using the hours-minutes-seconds format: (Huberman 00:12:41). This points the reader to the exact moment you are quoting or describing. For a general reference to the video as a whole, the author name alone is enough: (Huberman).
Whatever you put first in the Works Cited entry — creator or channel — is what must appear in the parenthetical, so decide your lead element before you write the in-text citation. When transcribing a spoken quotation, do not trust auto-generated captions; check the audio yourself, because MLA expects quotations to be accurate to the source. If a video has been deleted since you watched it, MLA still lets you cite it from your notes, but you should say in your text that the source is no longer available so the reader is not left chasing a dead link. A short list-format video with many quick claims is best cited once for the whole work rather than with a separate timestamp for every point. Build the entry with the generator below, then confirm three things by hand: the video title is in quotation marks, YouTube is italicised as the container, and the date is in day-month-year order with the month abbreviated.