Properly Formatted (MLA)
Andy Gurevich
Resources for Working with MLA
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- Formatting of the first page of your essay.
- Proper use of “in-text” citations (citing sources you use in the body of the text of your essay).
- Properly formatted “Works Cited” or “Works Consulted” page.
BEST: When an essay is properly crafted and formatted, the reader is able to clearly and easily follow the ideas and trace outside information to its original sources.
The acronym MLA stands for Modern Language Association. The MLA is a professional, international organization based in New York City, New York, U.S.A. Its stated purpose is to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature. It also provides a way for people working in the humanities to format their documents and handle source materials (we call this “MLA style”), and it is the principal professional organization for the humanities field.
What are the humanities? They are the field of study concerned with human culture, including literature, history, art, music, religion, foreign languages, and philosophy. In contrast, the empiric disciplines are those concerned with subjects involving verification through data collections, measurement, observation and other techniques for verification. The empiric fields of study include the sciences, math, teaching, history, psychology, and others.
As mentioned above, MLA style helps us format our documents and handle source materials. The use of a consistent document format by everyone using MLA makes it possible for us to pick up an MLA-formatted paper and follow it easily, without having to figure out how it’s arranged. Likewise, the use of a consistent approach to handling sources helps a writer avoid plagiarism and also helps a reader follow the writer’s use of sources.
Modern Language Association style periodically undergoes revision to keep up with changes in writing and publishing. The most recent ninth edition of MLA came out in 2021. Here’s what the MLA organization had to say about “MLA 9”:
“The ninth edition of the MLA Handbook, published in 2021, rethinks documentation for an era of digital publication. The MLA now recommends a universal set of guidelines that writers can apply to any source and gives writers in all fields—from the sciences to the humanities—the tools to intuitively document sources” (“What’s New”).
As a college student studying writing, you’ll use MLA style to accomplish the following:
1. To format your documents using a consistent style.
MLA style is the “outfit” of our written documents in the humanities. Much like a football player wears a helmet and pads or a soccer player wears shin guards, our documents “wear” a certain style of formatting. We’ll discuss that more below.
2. To identify and manage source materials when you use them in your own writing.
This insures you use sources correctly in your own work and give credit to the person who owns and/or created the source material, both of which help you avoid plagiarism. It