Find the book you're citing the essay from and open it to one of the first full pages that has the full title information. Titles on the covers of books are often abbreviated and MLA requires you to give it in full. Write this down.
Write down the name of the publisher and the city the book is published in. This is usually on the same page as the title, but sometimes it can be a page or two later.
Write down the date it was published or copyrighted. This will be the most recent year you can find. Again, this information will be in the first few pages.
Write down the name of the editor of the book and the name of the author of the article you're citing.
Record the first and last page of the article and the title of the article.
You should have all the information you need. Now all you have to do is put it in order. The correct MLA format is: author (last name, first name), title of article, title of book, editor's name, city, publisher's name, year, page numbers.
Put the title of the article in quotations and underline the title of the book. Keep the citations double-spaced and indent every line after the first.
Use this example as a reference for punctuation within the citation:
Doe, John. "Existential Philosophers." <u>Philosophical Movements of the 20th Century. </u>Ed Jane Doe. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1995. 37-54.