Writing Assignment Guidelines
Important: If a writing assignment is turned in and does NOT follow the guidelines below or is not thoughtfully edited, it will be sent back to the student BEFORE grading and the assignment will be considered LATE.
MLA Writing Formatting Instructions:
Type and double-space your essays and prose style assignments
Type poetry using whatever spacing is appropriate for poem
12 point font: Arial or Times New Roman ONLY
Left-hand margin has heading (also double-spaced)
Student’s Name
My name: Ms. Smith
Title of the Assignment (ex. Othello Analysis Essay)
Date in the format…19 January 2013
Right-hand margin has student’s last name & page number on EVERY page (unless there is only 1 page as in the case of a poem…if only one page, do not type anything in the right-hand margin)
Each paper must have an ORIGINAL TITLE centered above essay (title is ALSO part of the double spacing of the paper)
Use same size and same font as used in rest of paper
BE CREATIVE AND THOUGHTFUL ABOUT TITLE
Do not use quotation marks
Do not underline
Do not bold
Do not italicize
Capitalize the beginning of the first word and important words only
The paper should have 1 inch margins
No abbreviations (ex. &)
Write in present tense in literary analysis and in argument papers
Take Great Care in EDITING your papers
MLA Works Cited Instructions: (formally called Bibliography)
The list of sources that you cited in your essay is written on the LAST page in your paper
Use the Son of Citation Machine online AND to ensure that you have the proper format of each citation, you have to capitalize appropriately when you fill in the informational boxes on the website
Capitalize all major words in titles of books, magazine, and titles of articles
Capitalize all important words in website titles
Capitalize people’s names, cities, states, countries, etc.
Never input the URL or use any web addresses in your Works Cited page anymore…they are no longer needed & they are messy
Italicize titles of books, magazines, newspapers, journals, webSITES
Put quote marks around titles of articles & webpages from websites
Center the heading Works Cited at the top of your page above your list of resources…this title is a part of the double-spacing of the page.
These sources are arranged alphabetically by the first word of the entry, usually the author’s last name.
Each new entry of this list IS NOT indented on the first line, but all subsequent lines of each reference are indented five (5) spaces, called hanging indention.
This entire page is also double spaced
MLA In-Text Citation Instructions:
If you explicitly quote material from any source in your writing, you MUST include an In-text citation.
If you include any information within your writing that you learned from another source EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT QUOTING DIRECTLY, you MUST include an In-text citation
If you include any information within your writing that you learned from another source EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT QUOTING DIRECTLY, you MUST include an In-text citation
When you use the Son of Citation Machine online to gather your formatting for your Works Cited Page, it automatically also gives you the formatting for the in-text citation…please take note of it and write it down
To ensure that you have the proper format of each in-text citation, you have to capitalize appropriately when you fill in the informational boxes on the website
The in-text citation information is written inside parenthesis
The in-text citations are placed at the end of sentences AND that sentence’s period goes AFTER the citation
The in-text citations are placed at the end of sentences AND that sentence’s period goes AFTER the citation
If it is a source with pages, the page number(s) ALWAYS go inside the parenthesis at the end of the sentence
If you have written the other information that Son of Citation machine gives you for an in-text citation (author or title) as part of that sentence already, then do not repeat it in the parenthetical citation (again, page numbers must be a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence)
**Study Example MLA Style Research Essay to ensure you are formatting your papers correctly.
