MLA Formatting Example

The paper demonstrates MLA formatting. The notations are presented at the end of the page.

15[MSOffice4] January 2009

The[MSOffice6] MLA system of formatting is a standard of rules governing how to write and document a research paper in the United States. There are several other documentation styles which vary from the MLA, yet most English departments at American universities use the MLA format for presentations of their papers. The system not only has rules for how to document the works cited within a text but also for how to set up the presentation of the paper. This specific paper is used to present those rules.

MLA is an acronym for the Modern Language Association, “an organization of teachers and scholars founded in 1883”[MSOffice7] (Gibaldi xv), [MSOffice8] when college curriculums started adding modern languages along with the classical languages of ancient Greek and Latin. Today, it has over thirty- thousand members and supports several publications and activities, such as a yearly conference for topics in English scholarship. It publishes the MLA Handbook [MSOffice9] used widely for generations by high school, college and university students in the United States and other countries. The handbook originated fifty years ago to give agreed-on rules for “documenting quotations, facts, opinions, and paraphrases” to prepare manuscripts for publication (Gibaldi xvi).[MSOffice10] The original standards were prepared by the MLA executive director William Riley Parker and published in the association’s journal, PMLA, as an article entitled the “MLA Style Sheet.” [MSOffice11] This article eventually became the codified and standardized MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers in 1977.

Each published handbook can rewrite the rules for documentation and standards of presentation. At one point in time, all in-text citations were documented by footnotes—a difficult rule to fulfill when there were no computers to assist in the placement of this type of documentation. Students and scholars used a typewriter and ruler to make sure there was enough room at the bottom of the page for their citations. Bibliographies which used to be published at the end of the paper became works cited pages. With the advent of the Internet and the availability of on-line research, the MLA Handbook, in 1988, started allowing for electronics publications in works cited. The current MLA Handbook is the Seventh Edition and was published in March 2009. The major new change that occurred between the sixth and seventh editions was the citation of on-line sources. The huge web-site address is no longer required, nor is the source of where the web-site was accessed.

When told by an instructor to use MLA formatting when preparing your papers, make sure you follow the format they give you. Even though there is a standard published in the new Seventh Edition, each instructor may have their own style. Each scholarly field also has its own preferred style or set of guidelines for writing. Two of the most popularly used formats in universities are the APA (American Psychological Association) style used in Psychology and the CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) which addresses editors and procedures for preparing manuscripts for publication. This English class, however, uses the format set forth in The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7^th edition.

Works Cited[MSOffice12]

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6^th ed. New York: Modern Language[L13] Association of America, 2003[MSOffice14]

Isakson, Jeffrey. “The MLA Style Sheet.” [L15] Writer’s Choice, 1, 2 [L16] (January 2003)[L17] : 25-30[L18] . Web. 3 February 2010[L19] .[L20] [L21]

Several on-line resources for MLA Handbook guidelines:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/: This site is for Purdue University’s On-Line Writing Lab. It contains excellent resources for how to write a research paper from the ground-floor, as well as the MLA formatting styles for works cited.

http://www.libs.uga.edu/ref/mlastyle.html: University of Georgia Libraries page has a listing of different ways to format for the works cited page.

[MSOffice1]This is a heading and not a header. It contains: student’s name, instructor’s name, course name and number, date in this specific format.

[MSOffice2]The margins for the paper are set at one inch (1”) all the way around.

[MSOffice3]Everything is double-spaced – no extra spaces (hitting the enter key more than once) is used anywhere in the paper.

[MSOffice4]The font used in the paper is either Arial, Times-Roman or Courier at 12 point.

[MSOffice5]There is no extra-spacing between the heading and the title. The title is always in regular font (not completely capitalized) and mid-spaced.

[MSOffice6]All new paragraphs are indented one-half inch (1/2”) or one tab space.

[MSOffice7]All in-text citations are surrounded by quotation marks. When followed by the citation, all punctuation marks follow the citation.

[MSOffice8]All citations are bound by parentheses and contain the last name of the author with the page number where the quotation may be found. The last name of the author is the same one that appears on the works cited page. NOTE: the punctuation is found outside the parentheses.

[MSOffice9]Unless it is difficult to distinguish italics (in which case underline), all titles of books are italicized.

[MSOffice10]Most in-work citations are found at the end of the sentence, not within the sentence itself.

[MSOffice11]All titles of articles, short stories and poems are surrounded by quotation marks, with the punctuation for the sentence following the rules of grammar and quotations marks.

[MSOffice12]Put a title on the page.

[L13]NOTE: the indentation for the 2^nd/3^rd, etc. line of the citation. Also note, this is double-spaced as well with not extra spaces.

[MSOffice14]This is the standard format for an entry on a works cited page for a book. All others can be found in the MLA Handbook located on-line.

[L15]Title of the article

[L16]Name of the journal, italicized, with the volume number and issue. This can also be the name of the web site containing the article.

[L17]Publication of issue (month/season and year)

[L18]Page numbers of the article in the journal.

[L19]If the article has no author, make sure you lead with the title of the article.

[L20]Date the article is accessed on the web.

[L21]This is the standard entry for a journal article from the Web..