Check the MLA citations in your essay
MLA essays live and die by the Works Cited page. A single fabricated entry — or one quietly invented by an AI writing assistant — can undermine an otherwise strong essay. Check My Thesis verifies every MLA citation in your essay against five academic databases and flags any source it cannot confirm is real.
MLA reference
Smith, John A. "The Effects of Sleep on Memory." Journal of Cognitive Science, vol. 14, no. 3, 2021, pp. 211–229.
Matched in 5 databases
Author, year, and DOI confirmed
Fake reference flagged
No matching paper in any source
Catches fabricated MLA citations before your reviewer has to find them.
What goes wrong in MLA
The MLA errors a reviewer catches first.
Modern Language Association (MLA), 9th edition is standard in English, literature, languages, and the humanities. These are the mistakes that turn an honest MLA reference list into an integrity problem.
Works Cited entries for books or articles that do not exist
Author names that AI tools attach to the wrong title
Containers and page ranges that do not match the real source
The fix
Verify every MLA reference is real.
Paste your essay or upload the PDF. Check My Thesis reads every MLA citation, matches it against five academic databases, and flags anything it cannot confirm, before your reviewer has to.
Recommended
Citation Verifier
Verify every MLA reference in your essay against Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, and PubMed.
- Flags fake or AI-hallucinated MLA citations
- Catches wrong years, volumes, and DOIs that look correct
- Exports a verified, ready-to-submit reference list
Sentence level
AI Text Detector
Detect AI-generated text in your essay, the source of most fake MLA references.
- Sentence-level detection of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
- Highlights only the passages you need to rewrite
- Generates an integrity report you can share
Questions
MLA references in your essay.
Can I check the MLA Works Cited for an essay?
Yes. Upload your essay or paper and every MLA citation, including the full Works Cited list, is checked against real academic sources.
Does it catch AI-invented MLA sources?
Yes. The checker flags any MLA entry that cannot be matched to a real publication, which is the most common failure mode for AI-written essays.
Which sources does it verify against?
Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, and PubMed, covering the humanities and social-science journals that MLA essays typically cite.
Final check
Don’t submit unverified MLA references.
Run your essay, paper, or thesis through Check My Thesis before submission and replace guesswork with verifiable evidence.
Scan free · pay only to unlock the full report