How to cite a TED Talk in MLA
To cite a TED Talk from the TED website in MLA, list the name of the speaker, the talk title, “TED: Ideas Worth Spreading,” the month and year, and the URL.
In an in-text citation, you can use a timestamp to highlight a specific quote where necessary.
Format | Speaker last name, First name. “Talk Title.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Month Year, URL. |
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Works Cited entry | Jacobs, A. J. “The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Jan. 2021, https://www.ted.com/talks/a_j_jacobs_the_life_cycle_of_a_cup_of_coffee. |
In-text citation | (Jacobs 3:15) |
Citing a TED Talk from YouTube
If you’re citing the TED Talk not from their site but from YouTube, the format differs slightly. You should still list the speaker in the author position, but also list the uploader (usually “TED” or “TEDx Talks”) and give the full upload date, since it’s available on YouTube.
Format | Speaker last name, First name. “Video Title.” YouTube, uploaded by TED or TEDx Talks, Day Month Year, URL. |
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Works Cited entry | Bailey, Chris. “How to Get Your Brain to Focus | Chris Bailey | TEDxManchester.” YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 5 Apr. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Yvq-g7_Y. |
In-text citation | (Bailey 12:15) |
Frequently asked questions about MLA citations
- Are titles capitalized in MLA?
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Yes. MLA Style uses title case, which means that all principal words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions) are capitalized.
This applies to titles of sources as well as the title in the heading of your paper. Use MLA capitalization style even when the original source title uses different capitalization.
- What is the easiest way to create MLA citations?
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The fastest and most accurate way to create MLA citations is by using Scribbr’s MLA Citation Generator.
Search by book title, page URL or journal DOI to automatically generate flawless citations, or cite manually using the simple citation forms.
1 comment
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
January 15, 2021 at 3:48 PMThanks for reading! Hope you found this article helpful. If anything is still unclear, or if you didn’t find what you were looking for here, leave a comment and we’ll see if we can help.