MLA Formatting Practice

MLA stands for the Modern Language Association, which is an organization of educators who work in English and related fields.  English teachers use the phrase "MLA" to describe a set of formatting guidelines for essays and citations that this organization has created and uses for their own publications.

MLA can seem sticky to use at first, because it consists of a set of rigid guidelines.  Once you've done it a few times, though, it will become second nature.  Luckily, there are also a lot of great tools available to help you with it, as well.  We'll discuss more of these tools as we go on, but for now, I'd like us to start with the basics: what the first page of an MLA-formatted essay looks like.

MLA essays:

• are double-spaced
• include a "header" on all pages that shows your last name + page number, at the right-hand corner
• have the same four lines at the top left of page 1:

Your Name

Instructor Name

Course Name & Number

Due Date of assignment

• include a title on the fifth line, which is centered
• start the essay body on the sixth line, indented from the left margin
• don't skip lines between paragraphs
• use indents to show where new paragraphs begin

See--lots of sticky details!  So, let's make your life easier by creating a document right now that we can use as a template for the 2 MLA-formatted essays required this quarter.

Create a Google Doc that mimics the first page of an MLA essay.  You can make up whatever title you want, and you can leave the "body" of the paper blank.  What I'm looking for is the header and the four lines on the top of page 1, plus the title.

This will be a credit/ no credit task.  If you miss a small detail, I'll return it to you with comments and give you the chance to submit it again.

Use this template to help you get started.  (You have to be logged into your own Google account to see the template.  If you're not, then it will appear as a generic Google Drive link).