How to Cite YouTube and Other Videos in MLA and APA

With the advent of YouTube, Vimeo and other great sites, you can find short videos and how-to-videos online from a wide range of experts. This means, you might need to cite a video as part of your essay. Make your video citations “fabulous” by following a few simple tricks.

Style Matters

Of course, style matters. This is professional writing, after all. However, basically each style is looking to answer the same questions.

• Who uploaded it?
• Where can you find it?
• When did you access it?
• What is it?

If you can answer these basic questions, then you are well on your way to beautiful, professional reference citations. Now, all you need is formatting.

APA Online Video Citation

One of the most common styles used in both high schools and colleges, APA is a style that makes social science articles easy to cite. It gives them a nice flow, tone and, most of all, uniformity. To create citations for your APA Reference page for online videos, you’ll need:

• Author name, screen name or both (The screen name will go in brackets, if both, or instead of author name if no author name is available.)
• Year, month and day it was uploaded
• Title of the video in italics
• Medium in brackets [Video file]
• Retrieved from URL or DOI

Examples

For an online video, this will look like:

• With both: Harvey. B. [FakeName]. (2018, December 3).Title time [Video file]. Retrieved at www.fakewebsite.com
• Just screen name: Videomaster. (2018, December 3). Title time [Video file]. Retrieved at www.fakewebsite.com
• Streaming video: Allen, T., et. al. (Producers). (2017). The story of Diana [Streaming video]. Retrieved from http://www.netflix.com

 

Citing Online Videos From a Website in MLA

Videos aren’t just used by those in social sciences; humanities papers will use them too. This is why MLA also breaks down how to cite a video file in the works cited list.  First, the components:

• Author, producer, director, etc.
• Title of the video in italics or quotation marks (This will depend on if the video is considered a film or an episode per MLA style sheet.)
• Where you found it in italics (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
• Who uploaded it in italics
• Day, month, year it was uploaded
• URL

Since MLA can get a bit tricky, check out a couple different examples.

Example MLA with Author:

Example MLA without Author:

YouTube Video

Since YouTube is the most common video website out there, you’ll find that you might end up citing this nine times out of ten. So, it makes sense to look at specific YouTube examples in each different style. Remember in APA style, you do not put a period after the URL but you do include one in MLA.

APA Examples

Example APA Author and screen name:

Example APA Just screen name:

MLA Examples

Example MLA with author:

Example MLA without author:

Adding Videos

Videos can be a fun way to spice up your paper. Whether you are using a video from YouTube, Vimeo or any other website, make sure to get your citation and formatting right the first time.