Can I include the editor of a journal in a works-cited-list entry for a journal article?

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.

The names of journal editors are generally only included in works-cited-list entries for special issues of journals:

Charney, Michael W. “Literary Culture on the Burma-Manipur Frontier in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Literary Cultures at the Frontiers: Literature and Identity in the Early Modern World, special issue of The Medieval History Journal, edited by Sumit Guha, vol. 14, no. 2, 2011, pp. 159-81.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., editors. Identities. Special issue of Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, 1992.  

Although it is not conventional to include the name of a journal editor for citations of articles in regular issues of journals and we do not recommend doing so, if you elect to include one, place it in the “Other contributors” slot:

McCarthy, Anne C. “Reading the Red Bull Sublime.” PMLA, edited by Wai Chee Dimock, vol. 132, no. 3, May 2017, pp. 543-57.