MLA formatting for drama, poetry, and prose works

Formatting titles:

All separately published texts such as novels, plays, long essays and long poems, should be italicized when named, e.g. The Divine Comedy, Hamlet, and Mrs. Dalloway. (Underlining may be used in place of italicizing).

All short works that are published in a collection text such as short stories, poems, and essays, should be placed in quotations marks, e.g. "The Yellow-Wallpaper," "A Simple Heart," "Ode on a Nightingale," and "A Modest Proposal."

Formatting parenthetical citations for poetry: on first citation: (lines 3-4); thereafter (5-6). You only need the author's name in the citation if you haven’t already named her or him in the text itself or if you are using more than one author and the reader might be confused as to whose work you are citing.

If you're citing a long poem, like Dante's Commedia, you'll also need to include the canto, or the book, numbers in roman numerals, e.g. on first citation: (Canto 1, lines 2-3); thereafter, (II, 70-72).

Formatting parenthetical citations for prose: only cite the page number within the citation (87).

Formatting parenthetical citations for drama: on first and all citations (I. i. 6-7). That is, first name the act in roman numerals, then the scene in lower case letters, then the line numbers in Arabic numerals.