Summarised (and expanded) from comments above:
BibTeX uses the aux file written by LaTeX (showing where you want to cite what) together with a bst file (containing stylistic information - such as plain.bst) and a bib file (containing bibliographic information about any document you might want to reference). So a workflow from the command line might look like
latex
- to generate the aux file
bibtex
- to generate a bbl file which contains information about the specific references mentioned in the aux file, formatted correctly
latex
- to incorporate the information in the bbl file into your typeset document
- possibly
latex
again, to fix any cross-referencing problems introduced when all the citations were included
Looking at the aux and bbl files along the way - and, as @Joseph pointed out, the blg file which is BibTeX's log - can help to troubleshoot problems.
For completeness as an answer: on this occasion it apparently turned out that the bibtex
step wasn't working due to a typo in the name of the bst file.
The biblatex-mla
package seems to do a good job with basic MLA style citations and bibliographies. Here is an example of how to use it. You need to run latex biber latex latex
to get everything to look right.
Update (July, 2016)
It seems that development of biblatex-mla
has resumed. Using the latest version on CTAN this example compiles properly. I would strongly recommend you update your TeX distribution to TL 2016 instead of manually installing the package, since there have been many changes to both biblatex
and biber
which will also need to be updated, so manual updating will likely lead to package dependency conflicts.
Various previous problems with biblatex-mla
may have been fixed with this new version, so the warning on the previous version of this answer may not apply.
Previous Warning
As the comments have mentioned, and also this question: biblatex-mla sometimes \autocite[prenote][pg]{key} is not printing the author's name there seem to be significant problems with biblatex-mla
which hasn't been updated for some time. It may need to be used with biblatex
version 1.0.
\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=mla,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\begin{filecontents}{mla-test-bib.bib}
@article{Kavanaugh1976,
Author = {Kavanaugh, Robert D.},
Journal = {Child Development},
Month = {Sep},
Number = {3},
Pages = {885-887},
Title = {On the Synonymity of `more' and `less': Comments on a Methodology},
Volume = {47},
Year = {1976}}
@book{Saussure1995,
Author = {Ferdinand de Saussure},
Publisher = {Payot},
Title = {Cours de Linguistique G{\'e}n{\'e}rale},
Year = {1995}}
\end{filecontents} % This is the end of the sample bibliography
\addbibresource{mla-test-bib.bib} % you would use your own bib file here
\begin{document}
This is a citation. \autocite{Saussure1995}. Another citation \autocite{Kavanaugh1976}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
If you need footnote citations, use the package option autocite=footnote
and add the following code to your preamble (based on the solution posted here: Biblatex-mla gives me a \smartcite error).
\DeclareAutoCiteCommand{footnote}[f]{\footcite}{\footcites}
If you need to change the title of the bibliography to something other than "Works Cited", add the following code to your preamble:
\defbibheading{bibliography}{%
\section*{Bibliography}} %use \chapter* if the bibliography will be a chapter
Best Answer
The package
apacite
requires the bibstyleapacite
rather thanapa
. Change the lineto
and the result will be
Test cite (Law, 1966, 5.)
, as it should be