research essay

MLA PAPER FORMAT

This is what the first page of a short MLA-style paper looks like. Unless your teacher tells you otherwise, the font should be 12-point Times New Roman (though 12-point Arial and Calibri are often fine). Double space the entire paper, including each line of the header and all indented quotations. Don’t add an extra space before or after any paragraph. This page is based on the MLA Handbook, 7th ed. 2009; the 2016 8th edition does not address format issues and so offers no changes. Entries on the “Works Cited” page, however, represent 8th edition guidelines.

Wilcox 1

Cary Wilcox

Dr. F. McCourt

English 1011

10 September 2016

Catchy Title

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vel rhoncus eu, ornare et mauris. Mauris fringilla, ipsum vitae hendrerit

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mattis et, consequat a leo. Praesent porta risus at nisi posuere gravida. Donec

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1” from page top. 1” margin on each side of the page, including bottom.

Indent each paragraph ½” (five spaces or one tab space).

Indent quotations of more than four lines 1” (ten spaces or two tab spaces) from the left margin. Do not change the right margin and do not use quotation marks.

½” from page top. Click on the “Insert” tab in Word and then on “Page Numbering.”

Revised 8/31/16 Pocatello I.S.U. Writing Center Idaho Falls REND 323 Student Success Center CHE 220 208-282-3662 www.isu.edu/success/writing 208-282-7925

This is what the “Works Cited” page of an MLA-style paper looks like. Continue double spacing all entries without adding any extra spaces. Continue to number each page as if it were part of your paper. Alphabetize each entry by the last name of the first author. Consult our “MLA Style” handout for help in formatting specific entries.

Wilcox 6

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Catharine and Other Writings. Edited by Margaret Anne Doody and

Douglas Murray, Oxford UP, 1993.

Bour, Isabelle. “Mary Brunton’s Novels, or, the Twilight of Sensibility.” Scottish

Literary Journal, vol. 24, no.2, Nov.1997, pp. 24-35.

Gay, Penny. “A Hypothetical Map of Highbury.” Persuasions On-Line, vol. 36,

no. 1, Winter 2015, www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol36no1/gay.html.

Lee, Wendy Anne. “Resituating ‘Regulated Hatred’: D.W. Harding’s Jane

Austen.” ELH, vol. 77, no.4, 2010, pp. 996-1014. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40963117.pdf?_=1471459730771.

Lew, Joseph. “That Abominable Traffic”: Mansfield Park and the Dynamics of

Slavery.” History, Gender, and Eighteenth-Century Literature, edited by

Beth Fowkes Tobin.: The University of Georgia Press, 1994. 271-300.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. Vintage Books, 1999.

Start the first line of each entry at the left margin (1” from the paper’s edge). Indent every following line of that entry ½ inch (five spaces or one tab space).