If you are citing coauthors who share a last name (e.g., husband and wife or brother and sister), should you list the last name twice?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

Yes. You should treat each author as an individual with a unique identity. Thus, if you are citing a work by authors who share a last name, provide the full name of each author in the entry in the works-cited list. The following sentence and the works-cited-list entry below are examples:

Beginning with the seventh volume of The Story of Civilization, Will Durant and Ariel Durant were listed as coauthors (Age of Reason).

Work Cited

Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Age of Reason Begins: A History of European Civilization in the Period of Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Rembrandt, Galileo, and Descartes. Simon and Schuster, 1961. Vol. 7 of The Story of Civilization.