BC MANUAL
Bridgewater College Online Writing Manual


An Overview of MLA (Modern Language Association) Format

On this page you'll find information about:

Related pages:

Title Page, Heading, and Header

Title page: not required in MLA Format

Heading: Place in upper left corner
Information required: writer’s name, professor's name, course name/number, date
Doublespace between items in header; doublespace between header and centered title of your paper.
Example:

Arthur Hawkins

Professor Trupe

English 101

26 September 2003

My Career as a Writer

Header: writer’s last name plus page number on every page (including the first page, which also has the heading, and Works Cited pages), in upper right corner

Example:

Hawkins 1

In-text Parenthetical Citations

Author’s last name and page number appear in parentheses, if the author's name has not been included in the text introducing the quotation. If the author’s name is incorporated in the text, place only the page number in parentheses (see Example 2 below).

Note: No punctuation is inserted between name and page number.
Note: No abbreviation (p.) or word (page) is included to identify the number as a page number.

When you include a short quotation in the text of the paper:

Example 1:

“Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford” (O’Reilley 15).

Example 2:

O’Reilley asserts, “Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford” (15).

When you use a whole sentence to introduce a quotation, use a colon rather than a comma before the quotation.

Example 3:

O’Reilley claims that graduate students in literature have sought spiritual or emotional nourishment in literary works: “Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford” (15).

When you paraphrase or summarize text or wish to attribute factual information to a particular source, include the parenthetical citation in the sentence where you conclude the paraphrase, summary, or information.

Example 4:

O'Reilley claims that graduate students in literature have sought spiritual or emotional nourishment in fictional texts (15).

Indented Quotations

If a quotation is longer than four lines in your text, it should be indented.

Example 5:

One professor describes the onset of her questioning the value of teaching fiction in 

college literature classes in this way:

Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a 

kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, 

which I could not afford. With therapy, given luck, time, or medication, the 

neurosis wanes and one no longer makes appointments. Teaching English, the 

neurosis wanes as well, and then . . . well, why do you think so many English 

teachers become administrators, or throw themselves into abstract

contemplation of critical theory? (O’Reilley 15)

Footnotes and Endnotes

In MLA format, use footnotes or endnotes only to give the reader additional information or sources related to the paper but not directly included in the paper. The footnote appears at the bottom of the page on which the reference occurs. Most word-processing programs format the footnote automatically, but the rule is that the footnote appears four lines below the bottom of the text, is single-spaced, and follows paragraph indentation (first line indented). If two or more footnotes appear on the same page, doublespace between them.

For endnotes, start a new page after the text of your paper ends, with the title of Notes, before your Works Cited page. Doublespace throughout your Notes page; that is, doublespace each note and doublespace between notes. Be sure to list any sources mentioned in notes in your Works Cited.

Example:

 1Other books by women who have used farm or ranching life as a route to spiritual self-discovery include The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris, and A Country Year: Living the Questions by Sue Hubbell.

Bibliography

The bibliography is called Works Cited. It is doublespaced throughout; that is, doublespace each entry and doublespace between entries. It follows the "hanging indent" style; that is, the first line of each entry is at the margin, with successive lines of the entry indented. The sources are listed alphabetically by author’s last name. See additional Sample Bibliographic Entries in MLA Style for examples of article and Webpage entries.

Example:

Hawkins 5

Works Cited

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Viking P, 1986.

Hubbell, Sue. A Country Year: Living the Questions. New York: Mariner Books,

     1999.

Norris, Kathleen. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. New York: Mariner Books, 2001.

O'Reilley, Mary Rose. The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a 

     Quaker Buddhist Shepherd. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2000.

Bridgewater College Writing Center