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Always include a title page that contains an engaging, interesting, and relevant title. Note
that the section including the student’s name, course number, professor’s name, and date, as well
as the title, should all be double spaced. The title and the information on the title page do not
appear on page one of your document; this would be redundant. You will need to create the title
page as a separate document in order for the text of your essay to begin on page one (see title
page template). Here’s how to create a proper header in Microsoft Word: go to “View” on the
word-processing tool bar; scroll down to “Header and Footer”; type in your last name only;
select alignment to the right (rather than left or center); after your last name, space once, and
then click on the # sign in the header tool bar. Save and close the header window. The program
will automatically set up a proper header on all your subsequent pages and number them
accordingly.
Be sure to check your spelling, grammar, and usage throughout the paper. The grading
rubric only allows for only so many errors per page for each grade level. MLA citation errors and
documentation errors must be kept to a minimum for a paper to earn a C, and they must be nonexistent for a paper to earn higher than a C (in accordance with departmental policy). Note that
commas and periods always appear inside quotation marks, while semicolons, colons, question
marks, and exclamation points do not. Remember that the titles of novels, plays, films, and epiclength poems, such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost or Dante’s Divine Comedy, appear in italics.
The same is true for critical and reference books such as Natural Supernaturalism by M. H.
Abrams. On the other hand, shorter poems, short stories, and articles/essays appear in quotation
marks—for example, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T. S. Eliot. This allows us to
distinguish between James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” and Going to Meet the Man—
the former being the title of a short story and the latter being the title of the collection in which
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the story appears. Also, note that two hyphens—with no spaces before or after them—will create
a dash. Also note that in the absence of parentheses, commas and periods go inside quotation
marks, while other punctuation marks go outside, except in the rare case when the punctuation
mark is part of the quotation. Example: At the end of Raymond Carver’s short story “Gazebo,” a
couple’s relationship comes to end, just like in “Chef’s House”; however, we find reconciliation
and reconnection at the end of “A Small, Good Thing.”
If you have any formatting or documentation questions, then you can consult the MLA
Handbook. Use only Times New Roman typeface in 12-point font size using a 6.5” margin. I
will not read essays submitted in different faces or sizes. When you need to cite a long passage,
here is how you do it:
A quotation of more than forty or fifty words needs to be in block quotation form.
Its right margin should be set at 1 inch. (Note that paragraphs are indented half an
inch.) The quotation should be double spaced, without quotation marks at the
beginning or end of the quoted material. However, if the quotation includes a
mixture of dialogue and narration, or if two or more characters engage in
dialogue, then replicate the way the passage appears on the page. The
parenthetical citation follows the last item of punctuation. (16)
To quote fewer than four lines of poetry, use slashes to indicate line breaks. For example:
Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” begins, “In Worcester, Massachusetts, / I went with
Aunt Consuelo / to keep her dentist’s appointment” (1-3). Be sure to add a space before and after
each slash mark. To cite four or more lines of poetry, use block quotation format.
MLA format is designed to be easy, consistent, and, above all, repeatable. Simply lay this
template over your paper. If your formatting is different in any way, then reformat. Check all
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margins, headers, titles, and spacings. Remember to use only one space after a period, not two.
And try not to use ALL CAPS or italics or underlining or bold when you want to stress a word
or analytical point. Better to imply it with your language and argument. If your argument needs
these typographical marks, then you may want to retool your argument. Privilege strong
analytical verbs in the active voice and subject-verb-object sentence constructions. Example:
Here Shakespeare questions three early-modern assumptions about masculinity. Use quotation
marks to identify words being analyzed as words. Example: Words like “Indian” and “Negro,”
and phrases like “half breed” and “high yellow,” have a long and troubling linguistic history.
When citing a secondary source, always use a “cueing device” to introduce the quotation.
Example: In her 1990 study Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison notes that “in matters of race,
silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse” (9). When introducing a quotation,
never use commas after “such as” and “that,” which you will do occasionally, especially when
quoting just a phrase or excerpt. Example: Morrison further explains that living in a “wholly
racialized world” (4) demands new linguistic strategies for writers and readers alike. Do use
commas with every other introduction, unless you precede the quotation with a complete
sentence. Then, use a colon. Example: Calhoun, the narrator of Charles Johnson’s Middle
Passage, struggles to understand the metaphysics of the slave ship he inhabits: “She would not
be [. . .] the same vessel that left New Orleans, it not being the nature of any ship to remain the
same on that thrashing Void called the Atlantic. [. . .] And a seaman’s first duty was to keep her
afloat at any cost” (36). Ellipses are best used in the middle of quotations rather than at their
beginning or end. Use brackets to show that you, as the writer, have chosen to eliminate a phrase
or sentence, which distinguishes your ellipses from those that exist in the original text. Use one
space between each period.
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Note that in block quotations, the period comes at the end of the long block passage,
followed by a parenthetical citation and no subsequent period. This is not true with in-text
documentation, which should look like the examples in the previous paragraph. If you need to
make a minor adjustment to a quotation, such as turning a pronoun into a proper name for the
sake of clarity, use brackets. For example, “Following [Squibb’s] orders, I helped prepare mess,
and mess it was, for the biscuits were hard and full of weevils” (37). If quotation marks appear
around a word or words in an in-text passage you are citing, such as when dialogue is mixed with
narrative, use single quotation marks. Example: In Middle Passage, Calhoun struggles to grasp
the enormity of what Falcon has just told him: “My brain had stopped functioning a full five
sentences ago. [. . .] Considering thoughts of this sort was like standing on the edge of a cliff.
‘Captain,’ I said, swallowing, ‘you’ve got a god on ship?’” (102). And finally, you need a works
cited page at the end of your document. Insert a page break right here.
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Works Cited
Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher’s
Name, Year of Publication.
Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. “Title of Article or Essay or Poems or Story.” Title of
Anthology. Ed(s). of Anthology. Place of Publication: Publisher’s Name, Year of
Publication. page numbers of entry. (see Barthel entry below)
Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. “Title of Article or Essay or Poems or Story.” Title of
Journal. Volume Number.Issue Number (Year of Publication): Page Numbers. (see Doolen entry
below)
Author’s Last Name, Author’s First Name. Website’s Name. Date of Publication. Date of Last
Access. <official url including http://>.
Film’s Title. Dir. Jane Doe. Perf. Actor X, Starring Y, Actor Z. Studio, Year.
Director’s Last Name, Director’s First Name, dir. Film’s Title. Perf. Actor X, Actor Y, Actor Z.
Studio, Year.
Barthel, Diane. “A Gentleman and a Consumer.” Signs of Life in the U.S.A: Readings on Popular
Culture for Writers. Eds. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
2003. 171-80.
Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems, 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1983.
Blackmur, R. P. Language as Gesture. 1954. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961.
Doolen, Andrew. “’Snug Stored Below:’ The Politics of Race in James Fenimore Cooper’s The
Pioneers.” Studies in American Fiction. 29.2 (2001): 131-58.
Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963.
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---. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Selected Essays, 1917-1932. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1932.
Glasser, Perry. “The Veldt.” Passages North 27.1 (2006): 27-38.
Imitation of Life. 1959. Dir. Douglas Sirk. Perf. Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner, Juanita Moore, and
Lana Turner. Universal Studios, 2003.
Lee, Spike, dir. Do the Right Thing. 1989. Perf. Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Spike Lee, and John
Turturro. Universal Studios, 1998.
Nelson, Marilyn. “Owning the Masters.” After New Formalism: Poets on Form, Narrative, and
Tradition. Ed. Annie Finch. Ashland, OR: Story Line P, 1999. 8-17.