MLA Formatting Rules
1. Double space everything
2. Size 12 Times New Roman font only. Nothing bigger, in bold, a
different font.
3. Don’t change the default margins
4. In the “Header” section, put your last name and page number
on the right. DON’T TYPE the page number. INSERT the page
number so that word changes the number automatically for you.
5. Heading in the top, left corner of the first page. Your name, my
name, class name, date.
6. Title centered on the next line.
7. No extra spaces, start at the left on the next line.
8. Indent paragraphs, don’t add an extra space between lines for a
new paragraph
MLA Formatting Rules for Works Cited Page
1. Double space everything
2. Size 12 Times New Roman font only. Nothing bigger, in bold, a
different font.
3. Don’t change the default margins
4. Keep your running head going, don’t re-start pagination.
5. Title centered on the next line: Works Cited (Work Cited if
there’s only one!)
6. No extra spaces, start at the left on the next line.
7. Use “hanging indent”, which the reverse of a paragraph. The
first line starts at the margin, and all the others ones in the entry
are indented.
8. When you have a new source, start back at the left margin. Do
NOT skip lines, use bullets or numbers.
9. Sources go in alphabetical order by first word.
Once you know how to format it, you need to know
what, exactly, to put in each source citation.
There are two kinds of citations:
1) in-text citation – these go IN your TEXT
2) Full citation – these go at the end of your paper on
the Works Cited page.
In-text citations go in your text, directly at the end of a sentence with a
quote in it. They tell readers 1) Which source the info came from and 2)
What part of that source the exact information came from. It’s usually
(author’s name page number). But, we only have one source, so the
author’s name is obvious. Instead, for this paper, you will put the name
of the section the quote came from and the exact line numbers you
quoted. This isn’t so much as MLA, but MJLA (Ms Jayne’s Language
Association! Ha ha)
Hrothgar says to Beowulf, “quote” (Grendel lines 2 -3).
Beowulf’s strength is clear: “quote” (The Fire Dragon lines 23 – 29).
It is clear that the Anglo-Saxons valued the respect of leadership when
Unferth says, “quote” (Grendel’s Mother lines 4 – 10).
Full citations go at the end of your paper and tell readers everything
they need to know to find the source and read it for themselves. There
are approximately 1,000,000 rules to follow for full citations, and just for
fun, they change all the rules every few years.
Use resources every time so you get it right.
OWL : Online Writing Lab from Purdue
Citationmachine.net : full citation generator
Last name, page #
Work Cited
Beowulf. Trans. Burton Raffel. New York, NY:
Penguin, 1999. Print.