

Write in Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica font. Place a 1-inch margin along all sides of the paper (with the exception of the running head). The paper is printed on 8½-by-11-inch paper. Use block quotes for quotations that are four lines or longer.Ībbreviations do not include periods between the letters (e.g., US instead of U.S.). The entire paper is double-spaced, including block quotations and the references on the works cited page. It appears at the end of the paper, after any endnotes. The sources page is referred to as the works cited page.
#Bibliography mla style example how to
How to set up your paper in MLA format MLA formatting rules Make sure you understand the rules for the format you’re using so you don’t follow another style’s rules by mistake. By contrast, APA format emphasizes dates, and Chicago emphasizes supplemental notes like footnotes and endnotes.Īlthough the three styles have some common approaches to citing sources, each format has its own unique way of doing things for each source type. That means the names of creators are prominent in the text. These styles each include instructions for formatting citations, crediting sources, using quotations in your work, and other aspects of writing academic papers.īecause the MLA format deals with the humanities, it places more emphasis on authorship than the other styles do.

#Bibliography mla style example manual
You might also be familiar with APA format, the American Psychological Association’s style, or Chicago, short for the Chicago Manual of Style. MLA is one of the most commonly used academic styles, especially for high school and undergraduate students. One benefit of doing this is that you’ll see approximately how many pages your final draft will span before you reach that stage. There’s no need to format your first draft or any other documents that your professor won’t see, though you certainly can use MLA format throughout the writing process if you’d prefer. That includes any essay outline, research proposal, literature review, or list of sources your instructor asks you to submit before or alongside your final paper. Use MLA format for every part of an assignment you submit. If you aren’t sure if you need to use MLA or whether a specific formatting style is necessary for a particular assignment, ask your instructor.

That means English, arts, philosophy, religion, and ethics courses and any other classes you take that fall within these subjects. Use MLA format for the final draft of every piece of academic writing, including essays, reports, and research papers, that you do in your arts and humanities courses. This format (like other academic formats) takes the guesswork out of formatting your academic writing and ensures that your sources are cited and credited properly, leaving you, and your readers, to focus on your paper’s content. MLA format, like other academic styles, includes specific guidelines for a paper’s heading, in-text citations, works cited page, quotations, abbreviations, and even the size of the margins. MLA format was developed by the Modern Language Association to provide a uniform way for academics in the arts and humanities fields to format their works and cite their sources. We’ll also cover how to cite sources in MLA format, with examples. Below, we explain how the MLA format works and what sets it apart from Chicago and APA formats. Since most schools’ requirements include humanities courses, there’s a good chance you’ll write a paper in MLA format at some point. We use MLA format for topics in the humanities, including languages, philosophy, and the arts, but not history (which uses Chicago) or the social sciences, like psychology or education (which use APA format). MLA format is a set of formatting and citation guidelines for how an academic paper should look, similar to other styles such as Chicago or APA format.
