formatting papers

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Formatting Essays

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Page 1: Formatting papers

Formatting Essays

Page 2: Formatting papers

MLA stands for “Modern Language

Association”

The MLA is a huge organization made up of

teachers and scholars of many languages

and their literature, including English. They

meet once a year to share ideas, and one of

the regular projects is to update the MLA

style guide and citation manual.

Page 3: Formatting papers

It is expected throughout the U.S. that college

English papers will follow MLA standards.

This includes citing material from sources

according to MLA guidelines, but MLA

standards also cover the way that an essay is

presented.

We will talk in the next few classes about several related

topics:

• MLA formatting requirements

• MLA in-text citations

• MLA Works Cited pages

Page 4: Formatting papers

And while correct citations are

essential, formatting also matters!!

While the quality of what you have to say and

how you say it is more important than how it

looks, meeting the formatting guidelines

shows respect for the discipline and for your

own work: it shows that you know the rules to

participate in college-level writing.

You can format your paper as you type it, or do

all of this after the paper is written.

Page 5: Formatting papers

All of the actual essays that you write for

this class will be submitted electronically.

So you might think that formatting won’t matter.

However, MLA formatting is the standard not

for the hell of it, but for reasons of readability:

having space on a page gives me room to

mark and comment, and is kinder to my eyes

as well.

And again, it is a gesture that shows that you

know the standards, that you can meet the

standards, and that you are a participant in

the giant community of People Who Write

English Papers.

Page 6: Formatting papers

So, simply put, here are the rules:

• No title page, folder, or cover. Multiple pages must be stapled, not folded

or paper-clipped.

• Pages should have standard one-inch margins, and each page should

have your last name and the page number in the header.

• Papers should be typed in 12-point Times New Roman (or similar) font,

• and be double-spaced throughout, from the first line of the heading through

the last line of the Works Cited page, with no extra spaces anywhere in the

paper.

• The heading, on the top left-hand side of the first page, should be your

name, the course name or number and section number, my name, and the

due date for the essay.

• You should provide your own title for each paper; your own title is not

italicized, underlined, bolded, or placed in quotation marks.

• You must provide a (computer-generated) word count at the end of the

paper (before the Works Cited page).

• Essays with outside sources will require that you use MLA-style citation

and provide an MLA Works Cited page.

GOT THAT?

Page 7: Formatting papers

No title page, folder, or cover. Multiple pages

must be stapled, not folded or paper-clipped.

This will not be an issue with the electronic

submissions, but this will be true of some

assignments, and will also be true for other

classes.

This makes sense; if your instructor is carrying

a stack of papers and drops them, stapled

pages have a better chance of staying

attached, and the last thing you want is to be

penalized for missing pages of a paper. A

stapler is really a sound investment.

Page 8: Formatting papers

This will cover how to format using

MS Word 2010.

Different programs will look different, but all still

have the capacity to do these things. There

is always a “Help” option in the program itself,

so you can look up the how-to if you’re at a

loss.

Page 9: Formatting papers

Pages should have standard one-inch

margins...

Some older versions of MS Word

default to a different margin

width. You’ll want to check

and make sure about the

computer that you’re using to

format your work.

A reason for margins, besides

leaving room for comments, is

that printers usually require a

certain amount of blank space

at the edges.

Page 10: Formatting papers

...and each page should have your last name

and the page number in the header.

The header is accessed through the “Insert” tab:

Page 11: Formatting papers

… and you can add your name and have the program insert the correct

page numbers. You should “tab” over to the right margin or right-justify

the header text.

Page 12: Formatting papers

Papers should be typed in 12-point

Times New Roman font...

The “Times” in the name is a London newspaper, and the font was developed in 1931

in response to complaints about the newspaper’s lack of readability. The font size

is, again, a standard for readability of text-based publication.

That is TNR font.

This is not.

Page 13: Formatting papers

...and be double-spaced throughout, from the first line of

the heading through the last line of the Works Cited page,

with no extra spaces anywhere in the paper.

So either set the computer to double-spacing (this is not the default setting)

before you type anything or change the spacing of the whole text when

you’re done. MS Word also has a default setting that adds extra spaces

between paragraphs. Turn this off!

Page 14: Formatting papers

The First Page of Your Essay

The heading, on the top left-hand side of the first page, should be your name,

the course name or number and section number, my name, and the due

date for the essay.

There is no page number required on the first page: the heading and title make

it clear that it is the first page of the paper.

Page 15: Formatting papers

The Title

You should provide your own title for each paper; your own title is not italicized,

underlined, bolded, or placed in quotation marks. It should be centered and

follow standard American English-language rules for titles, that is, with all

words capitalized except for articles, conjunctions, and prepositions (i.e.,

really small words).

There are NO extra spaces around the title; just keep the double-spacing on.

Page 16: Formatting papers

Writing Assignments will have a required

word count rather than number of pages.

You must provide a (computer-

generated) word count at the end

of the paper (before the Works

Cited page). While the computer

will count for you, you will need to

type the number it provides.

The Word Count feature is accessed

via the “Review” tab. If you

*really* want to be accurate, you

can highlight only the actual

essay, not the header or title, and

then click Word Count. While this

is not essential, you should

NEVER include the Works Cited

page in your word count.

Word counts used to be done by hand, and all

proper nouns were counted as one word,

while articles (a/an/the) were not counted at

all. Now that we let computers count for us,

every set of letters between spaces gets

counted as one word. Therefore, if a

maximum word limit is given, standard

practice is to allow for 10% overage.

Page 17: Formatting papers

So your paper should look like this in a

word-processing program.

Essays with outside sources will require MLA-style in-text citations and Works

Cited page, but that is a separate topic.

Page 18: Formatting papers

And then, to be sure it is submitted exactly as

you prepared it, you should save it as a PDF.

A PDF is essentially a photograph of the screen. You will be submitting the

PDF to my Dropbox.