GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR COLLEGE ESSAYS AND MLA
STYLE
1.
Give your paper a title. If you cannot give your project a succinct and original title, you probably have not sufficiently focused and narrowed the purpose of your paper.
2.
Your paper should be double-spaced (including offset quotations) and pages should be numbered.
3.
Use MLA (Modern Language Association) parenthetical documentation when citing the text (examples follow). A quotation of three (3) lines or less should appear in the body of your typed text.
Example A
—The character of Philip Vane, in Stendhal’s
Red and Black , illustrates the ideological work of religion with his poignant comment that
“the most useful idea, for tyrants, is the idea of God” (223).
If the citation exceeds three (3) lines (even by one word), you should offset the quote within the body of your typed text. Further, if you are quoting more than one text within your essay add the author’s name within the parenthesis:
Example B
—With the division of labor, consciousness begins to affect the appearance of “something real”:
Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears[….]. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of an existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real.
(Marx 167-168, emphasis added)
4.
When working with a single poem give the citation (author name, if needed, and page number) of the poem once as in the above examples include the line numbers within the parenthesis following the citation, this is done by numbering the lines of the poem

(first line is 1, second line is 2, and so on). All subsequent quotations of the same poem need only include line numbers.
Example C— as in the last stanza of O’Hara’s “Autobiographia Literaria”:
And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems!
Imagine! (3,14-17)
When citing more than one line of poetry in the body of your paper, mark the line break with a backslash ( / ):
Example D—
Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Williams speaks to the poet “and when the doctor comes to/ [him] he says ‘No things but in ideas’” (O’Hara 79, 20-21).
(PLEASE NOTE: my alteration of the original text is bracketed and the quote within the citation is marked by single quotation marks.)
5.
Cite the texts that you use on a Works Cited page or Bibliography page that appears as the last page of your essay. Refer to the MLA Handbook, website or your favorite reference guidebook for proper citational form.
6.
Your paper should recount the action of the text in the present tense (“Marx describes ideology as a necessary component of any society in which a division of labor exists”). The past tense should be used for recounting historical events (“Marx completed ‘German Ideology’ in 1846 but never saw it published”).
7.
Use gender inclusive language in your paper. The pronouns referring to any abstract category such as “the reader” or “the critic” should include both gender forms (“Thus, the reader must rethink her/his first encounter with the text.”). Avoid use of the word
“man” as an abstraction designating humans in general.
8.
Your paper in tone and form should function as a formal argument that attempts to do three things: 1) Assert a reading of a specific text or concept (i.e., the development of a cogent thesis), 2) Demonstrate and elaborate this reading with specific reference to the text (“proving” the thesis), 3) explain the importance, significance and/or value of this reading.
9.
Finally, be mindful of your written expression, word choice, and sentence structure.
Avoid the use of clichés and colloquial phrases.