Standard Format for an Mla Style Paper

  A contemporary method of documentations appropriate for reports that contain information from only a few sources (Harcourt 448).  The MLA-style (Modern Language Association of America) report that is illustrated here is a method that that can be used.  There are several key differences between this style and the formats introduced in previous lessons. As MLA-style report has one inch side, top, and bottom margins.  The entire report is double spaced, including quotations, documentation, and the space below title.

      No title page is used.  Information normally found on the title page (writer’s name, teachers name, course title, and date) is keyed on the first page beginning once inch from the top margin starting at the left margin.

      Page numbers for all pages (including the first) are keyed at the right margin one half inch from the top edge of the paper.  The writer’s last name precedes the page number.

      Another difference is the way that long quotations are keyed in the MLA style.  In the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research papers, Gibaldi provides these guides for keying long quotations:

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  If a quotations runs more than four typed lines, set it off … by beginning a new line, indenting one inch (or ten spaces if you are using a typewriter) from the left margin, and typing it double spaced, without adding quotation marks.  A colon generally introduces a quotation displayed in this way, though sometime the context nay require mark of punctuation or none at all.  If you quote only a single paragraph, or part of one, do not indent the first line more than the rest.  A parenthetical reference to a prose quotation set off the text follows the last line of the quotation.  (73)

      Continue to double space the text following the quotation, indenting only the first line of each paragraph one-half inch (five spaces).  An example of the “Works Cited” page is illustrated on page 3.  Notice that it is also double spaced and arranged in alphabetical order with the second and succeeding lines of each entry indented one half inch.

                                                               Works Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research papers. 4th ed. New York: The Modern  Language association of America, 1995

Harecourt, Jules A. C. “Buddy” Krizan, and Patricia Merrier.  Business Communication.  3d Ed.

Cincinnati:  South-Western Educational Publishing, 1996.