MLA 9th edition multiple issues

Dear all,

I am writing my literature PhD in France, and am required to use the MLA format (9th edition). However, some things clearly do not add up, and Zotero is killing me.
- The place of publication never appears, no matter if I cite a book or a journal article (I have written it on every sheet, and I've downloaded the "correct" MLA multiple times)
- I am required to use footnotes, and not in-text citations. I know, MLA is usually used in-text, but there's nothing I can do about it. Either way, when I want to cite, I don't even get the date in-between the brackets! I just get the name of the author mentioned in the reference, which is pointless.

Regarding the bibliography, here are three examples of what I get (the italics are OK, not indicated here though):

Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Rex Collings, 1972.
Bachelard, Gaston. ‘La poétique de l’espace’. Books Abroad, vol. 32, no. 1, 1961 1957, p. 41. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.2307/40099309.
Buckley, Chloé Germaine. Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: From the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Here is what it should look like according to my official documentation :

Adams, Richard. Watership Down. London: Rex Collings, 1972.
Bachelard, Gaston. ‘La poétique de l’espace’. Books Abroad, vol. 32, no. 1, [1957] 1961, p. 41. DOI: 10.2307/40099309.
Buckley, Chloé Germaine. Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: From the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.


As you can see, a few things are off. I am not good at using codes etc, so I have no idea about how to modify all of those things. Could someone please help? Or do I need to abandon everything and do it by hand (and cry with my 700+ references)?

Thank you for you time!
  • For the newest version of MLA (9) we only have the author-date style, no footnote style.
    For older versions we do have a note style. See: https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=MLA

    The publisher location was removed from MLA at least since version 8.

    What guidelines are you referring to? If you have specific guidelines, say from your University, then you'll need to be looking into making a custom style as this wouldn't be in accordance with MLA in its current form.
    See for example the example publication on the MLA page here (the 2nd one by Sietse Hagen) that clearly shows NO publisher location for books/chapter: https://style.mla.org/sample-papers/

  • Yeah, whatever your school wants is quite distinct from MLA in a number of ways:

    The lack of year for in-text citation has been MLA style since forever (5th ed. at least). The DOI format is also correct as given.
    The DOI.org (Crossref) part is from the Library Catalog field in Zotero -- MLA generally wants you to provide the source where you obtained an article (JSTOR, EBSCO, etc.) so that'd go there.
    MLA generally recommends against adding original dates of publication and never puts them in square brackets. If they're to be used, they should just appear after the title, as in
    Bachelard, Gaston. ‘La poétique de l’espace’. 1957. Books Abroad, vol. 32, no. 1, 1961, p. 41. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.2307/40099309.

    which is what Zotero will produce when you correctly enter the original date of publication as
    Original Date: 1957 in Extra.
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