Formatting a MLA Style Paper MLA Style Research Formatting a MLA Style Paper

General Information All work should be submitted on white paper using black ink. Everything in an MLA style paper is double-spaced. Acceptable fonts are Times New Roman, Courier, or Arial. Use only one side of a sheet of paper. Don’t use illustrations or pictures. Don’t use report covers.

Title Page The first line of each page contains your name and the page number, aligned right, ½ inch from the top of the page. One inch from the top of the page, aligned left, begin with your name, the course name, the instructor’s name and the date. Double space everything. Double space again and center the title. Don’t use quotation marks or underline. Keep a one inch margin from the top, bottom and left side. Don’t justify the right side.

Sample First Page

Interior Citations Any time you use someone else’s ideas, you must cite the source. Usually, this will means at least one citation per paragraph in the main part of a paper. Most citations will give the source’s name and a page number; i.e.: ( Bloom 127-129) If you use the name of the source in your text, you may omit the name in the citation; i.e. :Bloom claims that Santiago is an allegorical version of Hemmingway himself (75-79.)

Quotations Word-for-word usage of someone else’s work must be identified as well as cited. Short quotations ( less than two lines of text) should be placed in quotation marks. Longer quotations (three lines or longer) should be indented ½ inch from the main body of the text. All quotations should have parenthetical citations showing their origin.

Special Citations When your research is primarily about a single work, you may cite only the title and page number. For example: “Call me Ishmael” (Moby Dick 1.) Long titles may be abbreviated. The Violent Bear It Away might be (TVBIA 135.) Material taken from a play may be cited by act, scene and line numbers: “She should have died hereafter”(Macbeth V,v,17)

Works Cited Format Works Cited pages follow the main body of the text. They should show pages numbers like the rest of the paper. Use the same fonts and spacing as the main text.

Works Cited page The Works Cited page should contain only works that are actually used in the paper. There must be at least one internal citation for each work listed. Entries are arranged alphabetically by the names of the authors or the first important word in the title (ignore articles a, an and the.) Multi-line citations use a hanging indent of ½ inch. Again, everything is double-spaced.

Style for a Book Citation Expert, I.M.A. The Book About Everything. New York: Doubleday. 2005. Print.

Encyclopedia Citation Burney, David M. “Hawthorne, Nathaniel.” The Encyclopedia Americana. Ed. 27. Print.

Article in an Edited Book McMurray, Robert M. “Civil War Letters.” Writings In Dangerous Times. Ed. William Styon. New York: Harper and Row. 1995. 204-215.Print.

Web Site Citation Hall, Janet. “Melville’s Sailing Days.” The Moby Dick Web Site. American Writers Society.17 October 2007. Web. Accessed 24 September 2008.

Web Site With No Author Productions, Inc. 2005. Web. “Edgar Allan Poe.” Mysterynet. New Front Productions, Inc. 2005. Web. Accessed 30 August 2010.