Effective Tips to Help You Ace Your Essay MLA Format
College essay writing is without doubt one of the most difficult tasks students have to handle. it is thus important to understand the basics of academic writing including the styles. MLA (Modern Language Association) is one of the major writing styles you will encounter and learning about it is a good starting point in improving your English essay or other subjects writing.
When your teacher requests for an essay in MLA, every component including in-text citations, referencing, cover page, page numbering, page margins, spacing, font, headings, and works cited page must all conform to this writing style guidelines. In this article, you will find the crucial MLA formatting considerations to help you become a better essay writer. Here you go.
- General Guidelines
When learning how to write an essay in MLA, the most important thing is to remember the following general guidelines. They will guide you every time you have such papers to write:
- Default font: Set as Times New Roman, 12 points.
- Margins: Make 1-inch margins on the top, bottom, and sides
- Indents: indent by one-half inch the first word in every paragraph. Also, indent set-off quotations one inch from the left margin.
- Spacing: The entire research paper including works cited page should have double spacing. After periods and other punctuation marks leave one space unless instructed otherwise.
- Titles and Page Numbers Guidelines
Whether you have a persuasive, descriptive, argumentative essay or any other kind of MLA paper, follow these guidelines for the best grade:
- You need to italicize titles to create emphasis.
- Listed endnotes on a separate page before your bibliography/works cited page.
- The title page isn’t necessary unless your professor requests it.
- In the upper left corner of the page of your essay type your name, one line below put your professor’s name and one line below the name of the course. Below all these write the date in which you are typing up the material.
- On the upper right corner, you have page numbers preceded by last name (Sheila-35)
- Do NOT underline, bold, or type the title in all capital letters. Avoid placing a period after the title or after any headings. The rules apply to all essay examples without exceptions.
- In-Text Citation
In-text references are crucial not only to support your arguments but to avoid any plagiarism on your essay. In MLA they follow a quote or paraphrase from another work. The rules for such MLA intext citation are as follows:
- The in-text citation corresponds to a reference in the main works-cited page.
- The in-text citation includes author’s surname, and the page, or page-range
- Follow directly after the quote or parenthetical
- For online sources where no page number is available, include only the author's name.
- Where author's name is unavailable, get a portion of the source material's title.
- Guidelines for MLA Works-Cited List
The rules to follow include:
- The works-cited page is on a new page at the end of the document.
- Alphabetically ordered using the name of the first author
- Double-spaced for the entries
- For multiple works by the same author, give full name in the first entry
- In summary, the reference must include author, the title of the source, the title of the container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, and location.
There are many other things to learn about MLA formatting. If you have an argumentative MLA essay assignment hiring a professional writer is the easier way to go. They will help with argumentative essay topics, research, formatting thus saving you a lot of time and stress.