Basic MLA Essay Formatting Rules For College Students

An MLA style paper needs to be written according to the specific instructions contained within the official guide, unless otherwise stated by your teacher, professor, or someone else at your college. Essentially, MLA style was brought about to ensure consistency within certain academic papers, and is one of a number of different styles that hope to achieve the same aims.

In fact, there are various different styles that you may need to use from time to time, including APA style, MBA style, and several others. Therefore, is important to know the difference between them, so as not to make any unnecessary mistakes.

Formatting your paper

If you have been asked to write a paper in MLA style, then you may be wondering what formatting rules you need to use. Essentially, you will need to change various settings on your word processor in order to ensure that your document is setup correctly.

Whilst this can be done at the end, it is best to try and get as much of the formatting done both from the beginning, and during the writing process. If you start off correctly, then this will help to save you time in the long run.

Various things you may wish to consider include what font you are using, as well as any requirements concerning the size of any text, including any differences between the size of the main body of text in comparison to any headers and subheadings.

You will also need to ensure the layout of the pages is correct, by setting the correct margins, as well as any line spacing requirements.

All of these details can easily be found in the MLA style guide book; although, as mentioned, you will need to listen to any other instructions that you may have been given. Therefore, if you are asked to perform any formatting instructions that are different from the MLA style guide book then you should follow the new information that you been given some; however, it can still be worth just double-checking to ensure that these instructions are correct, and that no one has made a mistake.

References and citations

One final thing to be aware of is that, as with any academic paper, it is vital that you include references and citations for any text that has been copied from another source, even if it’s only paraphrased. This helps to ensure you will not get penalised for plagiarism.