Use MLA Style To Your Advantage While Writing For Your College Essay

The Modern Language Association or MLA format is the most commonly followed writing styles for high school and college students. It is one of the most widely accepted writing formats for professional and academic writing. This format of writing has been developed keeping in mind the requirement of students, researchers and scholars in the field of liberal arts and humanities to follow a uniform way of presenting their writing papers and essays. Following this style of writing can ensure uniformity in your writing pattern and enhance the quality and attractiveness of your essay by enabling you to cite sources and references in an appropriate manner.
If you are writing an essay or a paper for your College or University coursework, check for the instructions provided by the professor or examiner to ensure that you are required to follow MLA style writing. Some make minor changes to the commonly followed MLA format. Moreover, if no specific format is required you may voluntarily opt to follow this format for its wide acceptability. In either case, you will need to follow the guidelines of MLA writing in order to develop a well-crafted essay and use it to your benefit for obtaining high grades for your curriculum.

MLA Style Requirement: Including a cover page

There is no need for inclusion of a cover page for the MLA format unless specifically asked to do so. The standard MLA formatting rules do not mandate such requirement. However, for long pages, the professors might ask the students to provide a cover page in which case you need to include specific information to such page.

• Title – The title to be provided in the page should be positioned one-third down from the top. The title should be informative as well as creative, including a subtitle. Separate the former from the latter with a colon. Capitalize every first letter of a word.
• Full name – Write your name on the middle of the page, centered and followed by the word “By”. Provide both your First and last name while mentioning it in the cover page.
• Other essential information – About two-thirds the way from the top of the page includes essential information about the essay such as the class with the section number. roll number, the name of the instructor, and any other information which you think might be necessary for inclusion. At the last line provide the due date of submission in a day, month, and year format.

Paper Heading

Though it is not mandatory to have a cover page it should definitely contain a paper heading. The top right corner of every page must include your last name as the writer and each page serially numbered. This is also referred to as a running header. The left side of the first page shall include the heading with double spacing. Include all the necessary details which you would have otherwise included in your cover page.

General Format for Body

The standard MLA style guide requires writers to use a font which can be easily read, with the frequently recommended font being Times New Roman. The entire essay should have double spacing with a margin of one inch on all sides of the paper. Include a space after every period and use italics rarely where it is required. Words can be italicized to emphasize key points or give titles for long essays. The indentation for every paragraph shall be five spaces or a tab key. Refrain from using extra spaces except when you are required to write a business essay. Otherwise, follow the general instructions for writing an essay in the MLA format.

In-text Citations

Each and every source that has been used to develop content for the essay should be properly cited. Wherever, you use a paraphrase, summary or a direct quote in your essay, add a citation in the form of parenthesis at the end of the sentence indicating the source of such information. However, there is a specific format for including parenthetical citations. The last name of the author along with the page number should be mentioned in alphabetical order. In case of an online source where there is no page number available, only the author’s name should be provided. Quotes that are longer than four lines should be single-spaced and indented. A separate page should be allotted for mentioning all the sources from where information has been collected in a serial manner. However, this should not be confused with a Bibliographic page.

Additional Paper Styles

MLA allows its users to add headers, but they should be serially numbered in Roman numerals. However, it discourages writers from using endnotes and footnotes unless there is a need for sources citation. Even if they are required to be added, they must be short and include only those information which is relevant to the essay. Any image included in the content must be backed by proper evidence. A relevant label must be created and placed beneath the image with a proper number assigned to it in Arabic, whereas, for a table or dataset there is no need for inclusion if a label. The title of the table should be mentioned in title case format. For presenting a table, double spacing should be used throughout the entire table.

Points to Remember

While writing an essay in MLA format, you need to be extra cautious as there are a host of things that need to be taken care of. To sum it all, the basic points that should be kept in mind are –

• The margin of the Page
• Font Type and Size
• Text Indentation
• Spacing
• Order of the Pages and Pagination
• Endnotes and Footnotes

So, if you are asked to write an essay following the MLA style format make sure that you cover all the points with utmost perfection as missing a single point would indicate carelessness and unprofessional behavior. Make sure that you devote cent percent of your time and effort in achieving the highest grades in your academic curriculum. Incase you are in need of help, always refer to a professional writing company or writer.