MLA Rules for Research Papers
From: The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 2010. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.
The Basics
- Always follow your teacher’s directions (even if you break MLA rules)
- Need a proper heading in the upper left-hand corner:
Your Name
Teacher’s name (spelled correctly)
English III
Due Date (day, month, year)
A header with your last name and page number goes on the upper right hand corner.
- Center the title under the heading – should be interesting and original. Do not underline it, italicize it, or place it in quotes.
- Use Times New Roman/ 12 font. Some teachers will accept Ariel as a font style
- 1 inch margins should surround all sides of the document
- Double space the entire essay – do not add extra spaces between paragraphs
- Printer ink needs to be black – remove any hyperlinks, which will turn blue or purple.
- When appropriate, try to avoid shifting tenses of your verbs. Even better keep all analysis in the present tense when you can.
Here is a sample of the first page of a paper in MLA style:
Punctuation
9. Use quotations marks for:
- Titles of short or minor works
- Songs
- Short Stories
- Essays
- Short Poems
- One Act Plays
10. Use a block quotation when the quotation is more than four typed lines on the page. A block quotation is removed from the main body of your paragraph. Indent one inch from the main margin (about two tabs) and begin your quote. Maintain double spacing throughout, but you do not need to use quotation marks. Also note where the period goes on this form of citation.
Example:
…as Fitzgerald acknowledges:
Possibly it had occurred to us that theocracies tend to be a dying breed. Indeed they are a minor manipulation of a tangential spirit that releases nothing important to a cultural basis. With this in mind, no one is immune to the tragedy of death. Even Aristotle has noted this premise in his book Ars Poetica, a classic among theologians. (98)
11. When writing dialogue, always write a new speaker’s lines in a separate paragraph – no matter how brief the line he or she speaks may be.
12. Use a comma to join 2 independent clauses by a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, for, nor, so).
Road construction can be inconvenient, but it is necessary.
The new house has a large fenced backyard, so I am sure our dog will enjoy it.
13. Use a comma after an introductory phrase, prepositional phrase, or dependent clause.
To get a good grade, you must complete all your assignments.
Because Dad caught the chicken pox, we canceled our vacation.
After the wedding, the guests attended the reception.
14. Use a comma to separate elements in a series. Although there is no set rule that requires a comma before the last item in a series, it seems to be a general academic convention to include it. The examples below demonstrate this trend.
On her vacation, Lisa visited Greece, Spain, and Italy.
In their speeches, many of the candidates promised to help protect the environment, bring about world peace, and end world hunger.
15. Use a comma to separate nonessential elements from a sentence. More specifically, when a sentence includes information that is not crucial to the message or intent of the sentence, enclose it in or separate it by commas.
John's truck, a red Chevrolet, needs new tires.
When he realized he had overslept, Matt rushed to his car and hurried to work.
16. Use a comma between coordinate adjectives (adjectives that are equal and reversible).
The irritable, fidgety crowd waited impatiently for the rally speeches to begin.
The sturdy, compact suitcase made a perfect gift.
17. Use a comma after a transitional element (however, therefore, nonetheless, also, otherwise, finally, instead, thus, of course, above all, for example, in other words, as a result, on the other hand, in conclusion, in addition)
For example, the Red Sox, Yankees, and Indians are popular baseball teams.
If you really want to get a good grade this semester, however, you must complete all assignments, attend class, and study your notes.
18. Use a comma with quoted words.
"Yes," she promised. Todd replied, saying, "I will be back this afternoon."
19. Use a comma in a date.
October 25, 1999
Monday, October 25, 1999
25 October 1999
20. Use a comma in a number.
15,000,000
1614 High Street
21. Use a comma in a personal title.
Pam Smith, MD
Mike Rose, Chief Financial Officer for Operations, reported the quarter's earnings.
22. Use a comma to separate a city name from the state.
West Lafayette, Indiana
Dallas, Texas
23. Avoid comma splices (two independent clauses joined only by a comma). Instead, separate the clauses with a period, with a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction, or with a semicolon.
Semicolon
24. Use a semicolon to join 2 independent clauses when the second clause restates the first or when the two clauses are of equal emphasis.
Road construction in Dallas has hindered travel around town; streets have become covered with bulldozers, trucks, and cones.
25. Use a semicolon to join 2 independent clauses when the second clause begins with a conjunctive adverb (however, therefore, moreover, furthermore, thus, meanwhile, nonetheless, otherwise) or a transition (in fact, for example, that is, for instance, in addition, in other words, on the other hand, even so).
Terrorism in the United States has become a recent concern; in fact, the concern for America's safety has led to an awareness of global terrorism.
26. Use a semicolon to join elements of a series when individual items of the series already include commas.
Recent sites of the Olympic Games include Athens, Greece; Salt Lake City, Utah; Sydney, Australia; Nagano, Japan.
Colon
27. Use a colon to join 2 independent clauses when you wish to emphasize the second clause.
Road construction in Dallas has hindered travel around town: parts of Main, Fifth, and West Street are closed during the construction.
28. Use a colon after an independent clause when it is followed by a list, a quotation, appositive, or other idea directly related to the independent clause.
Julie went to the store for some groceries: milk, bread, coffee, and cheese.
In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln urges Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work of the deceased soldiers: "It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
I know the perfect job for her: a politician.
29. Use a colon at the end of a business letter greeting. (rarely seen in MLA essays)
To Whom It May Concern:
30. Use a colon to separate the hour and minute(s) in a time notation.
12:00 p.m.
31. Use a colon to separate the chapter and verse in a Biblical reference.
Matthew 1:6
Parenthesis
32. Parentheses are used to emphasize content. They place more emphasis on the enclosed content than commas. Use parentheses to set off nonessential material, such as dates, clarifying information, or sources, from a sentence.
Muhammed Ali (1942-present), arguably the greatest athlete of all time, claimed he would "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
Dash
33. Dashes are used to set off or emphasize the content enclosed within dashes or the content that follows a dash. Dashes place more emphasis on this content than parentheses.
Perhaps one reason why the term has been so problematic—so resistant to definition, and yet so transitory in those definitions—is because of its multitude of applications.
In terms of public legitimacy—that is, in terms of garnering support from state legislators, parents, donors, and university administrators—English departments are primarily places where advanced literacy is taught.
The U.S.S. Constitution became known as "Old Ironsides" during the War of 1812—during which the cannonballs fired from the British H.M.S. Guerriere merely bounced off the sides of the Constitution.
To some of you, my proposals may seem radical—even revolutionary.
34. Use a dash to set off an appositive phrase that already includes commas. An appositive is a word that adds explanatory or clarifying information to the noun that precedes it.
The cousins—Tina, Todd, and Sam—arrived at the party together.
Italics
35. Underlining and Italics are often used interchangeably. Before word-processing programs were widely available, writers would underline certain words to indicate to publishers to italicize whatever was underlined. Although the general trend has been moving toward italicizing instead of underlining, you should remain consistent with your choice throughout your paper. To be safe, you could check with your teacher to find out which he/she prefers. Italicize the titles of magazines, books, newspapers, academic journals, films, television shows, long poems, plays of three or more acts, operas, musical albums, works of art, websites, and individual trains, planes, or ships.
Time
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali
Amazon.com
Titanic
36. Italicize foreign words.
Semper fi, the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps, means "always faithful."
37. Italicize a word or phrase to add emphasis.
The truth is of utmost concern!
38. Italicize a word when referring to that word.
The word justice is often misunderstood and therefore misused.
Apostrophes
39. The apostrophe has three uses:
- to form possessives of nouns
- to show the omission of letters (don’t use this in formal essays)
- to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters
Forming Possessives of Nouns
40. To see if you need to make a possessive, turn the phrase around and make it an "of the..." phrase. For example:
the boy's hat = the hat of the boy
three days' journey = journey of three days
41. If the noun after "of" is a building, an object, or a piece of furniture, then no apostrophe is needed!
room of the hotel = hotel room
door of the car = car door
leg of the table = table leg
Once you've determined whether you need to make a possessive, follow these rules to create one.
- add 's to the singular form of the word (even if it ends in -s):
the owner's car
James's hat (James' hat is also acceptable. For plural, proper nouns that are possessive, use an apostrophe after the 's': "The Eggles' presentation was good." The Eggles are a husband and wife consultant team.)
- add 's to the plural forms that do not end in -s:
the children's game
the geese's honking
- add ' to the end of plural nouns that end in -s:
two cats' toys
three friends' letters
- add 's to the end of compound words:
my brother-in-law's money
- add 's to the last noun to show joint possession of an object:
Todd and Anne's apartment
Uppercase Letter Abbreviations
42. Do not use periods or spaces in abbreviations composed solely of capital letters, except in the case of proper names:
US, MA, CD, HTML
P. D. James, J. R. R. Tolkien, E. B. White
Lowercase Letter Abbreviations
43. Use a period if the abbreviation ends in a lower case letter, unless referring to an internet suffix, where the period should come before the abbreviation:
assn., conf., Eng., esp.
.com, .edu, .gov (URL suffixes)
Note: Degree names are an exception to the lowercase abbreviation rule.
PhD, EdD, PsyD
44. Use periods between letters without spacing if each letter represents a word in common lower case abbreviations:
a.m., e.g., i.e.
Other notable exceptions:
mph, os, rpm, ns
Basic In-Text Citation Rules
In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as parenthetical citation. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase.
General Guidelines
- The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1.) upon the source medium (e.g. Print, Web, DVD) and (2.) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited (bibliography) page.
- Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.
In-Text Citations: Author-Page Style
46. MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).
Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).
47. Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:
Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. London: Oxford U.P., 1967. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with Known Author
48. For Print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.
Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as "symbol-using animals" (3). Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).
These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry in the Works Cited:
Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with No Known Author
49. When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (e.g. articles) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire websites) and provide a page number.
We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has “more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change . . . ” (“Impact of Global Warming” 6).
In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title of the article appears in the parenthetical citation which corresponds to the full name of the article which appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:
“The Impact of Global Warming in North America.” GLOBAL WARMING: Early Signs. 1999. Web. 23 Mar. 2009.
Author-Page Citation for Classic and Literary Works with Multiple Editions
50. Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work like Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto. In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:
Marx and Engels described human history as marked by class struggles (79; ch. 1).
Citing Authors with Same Last Names
51. Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:
Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages for medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).