MLA Pointers and Reminders

MLA Pointers and Reminders

-The entire essay is double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, and printed on one side only

-Last name followed by page number in upper right-hand corner of each page. Times New Roman, 12 point font.

-Name, Instructor, Course title, and Date [12 February 2025] on left side and double-spaced

-Title before main text of essay (also double spaced before and after it)

-Works Cited page and the hanging indent:

Baker, Gladys L., et al. Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture. [Federal         Government], 1996.

“Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.” Prairie View A&M, 2003. www.pvamu.edu/ library/about-the-library/history-of-the-             library-at-prairie-view/1890-land-granthistory/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2008.

“Hacker.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker. Accessed 29 Sept. 2025.

-Works Cited, alphabetizing: 
      If source begins with A, An, or The, alphabetize by the next word.
Entries that begin with a number, alphabetize as though the number were written out.

-In-text citation punctuation and leading into quotes example:

Example 1: According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, 9 out of 10 statistics are fabricated (Jones).

Example 2: According to John Jones, 9 out of 10 statistics are fabricated.

-For long titles, shorten inside parenthesis for in-text, but not on Works Cited page.
  ex.  “Thermodynamics: A Study in the Quantization of Electrons in Particle Fields”
  ex.  In-text, it would just be the following: (“Thermodynamics”).

-Italics: use for names of websites and books and when referring to a word.
      Example: The word exquisite is derived from Latin.

-Dates: heading, 6 September 2025, versus on Works Cited: Accessed 6 Dec. 2024.

-if you use a quote that was quoted in some other source, then in parentheses, it should be:

(qtd. in Jones)

-in-text multiple sources for the same information: (Jones; Williams)
-in-text two authors, one work: (Smith and Johnson). Works Cited: Jones, John and Tim Smith.
-in-text a work with three or more authors: (Smith et al.). Same for Works Cited page.
-numbers are generally written as words if one word or two (twenty-two), but 12 billion and 65%, though other discipline specific conventions may be used.

Note: There are certain conventions that are used in some disciplines, so there may be exceptions for some of the above. For example, in linguistics, single quotes are often used when talking about words or phrases. Typically, single quotes are only used when you have a quote inside a quote, or if you are British and using British English, in which case they use them to refer to words and in the same way American English uses double quotation marks. Likewise, where we use double quotation marks, they use single quotation marks.