Imagine your teacher asked you to write an essay that will be a significant contributor to your annual marks sheet. You work hard, conduct in-depth research, formulate evidence-based arguments, follow the required formatting style, and write a well-structured essay. 

But at the end of the day, you got opposite grades from your expectations. The only reason for these bad grades is that you didn’t follow the MLA formatting rules in the right way, which is recommended.

That’s happened just because the formatting is not your cup of tea. You are not alone. According to a report by Times Higher Education, 54% of students fail to write an essay following the recommended academic guidelines.

If you want to know the rule of MLA formatting in your essay, you have landed at the right place. In this article, we’ll share a complete guideline for how to format an essay in MLA format. Let’s get started.

Points to Remember:

  • MLA format style is the most common formatting style for essays in the arts and humanities subjects.
  • Following the formatting guidelines correctly can give the essay a consistent and smooth structure. 
  • Correct formatting rules also make the essay easy to understand for the audience.
  • Double-check the document to ensure that you have followed all the formatting rules properly, and leave no stone unturned.
  • Use the MLA formatting tools to save your time and energy and get a well-formatted paper as per the requirements.

What is MLA Format for an Essay?

MLA, also known as the Modern Language Association, is a commonly used formatting style. According to the University of Toronto Mississauga, MLA formatting provides a uniform flow to your academic documents, particularly for the arts and humanities subjects. 

Like other formatting styles, MLA style has formatting guidelines for all the parts of an essay, such as headings, in-text citations, quotations, abbreviations, and even the page margin.

Also, this format removes the uncertainties from your papers as every source is cited correctly, and allows your readers to stay focused on your essay. Generally, these formatting rules are applied in the final draft of your essay. 

If you are not sure how to apply these rules in your essay, you can seek assistance from your instructor. In addition, you can request the professionals of The Academic Papers UK to essay writing services, which is written according to the formatting guidelines.

How to Use MLA Style for Essay Formatting?

The MLA format consists of the guidelines that make your essay simple and easy to understand. In other words, the MLA format for an essay is like a set of rules that helps writers to structure their essays properly. Are you curious to know what these rules are?

Keep reading this article to the end to satisfy your curiosity. 

1: General Paper Layout of Your Essay

  • Paper size: The general size of the paper in MLA format is 8½-by-11-inch.
  • Line Spacing: The entire page is written in double-spaced text in the MLA format.
  • Margins: Keep the one-inch margins on all four sides of the page.
  • Paragraph Indents: Always indent the first word of every paragraph in your essay. Also, the sentence of every paragraph must begin from half an inch from the left margin of the paper.
  • Title: The title in MLA style is written at the centre of the page after adding the header. This title is written in title case and doesn’t put a period after the title. Also, avoid using bold, italics, underlining, or quotation marks for your title.
  • Font Size and Style: You can use any font type and size in MLA formatting. However, Arial and Times New Roman are the most common fonts in the MLA formatting style. The recommended font size for these font styles is 12-point, but you can also use other font sizes, such as 11-point. Just make sure that the font size is easy to read.
  • Running Head: Add a running header at the half-inch from the top, add the author’s last name along with the page number in the upper right corner of the page.

 2: Essay Title Page

Generally, in MLA formatting style, a separate title page is not required. The main body of the essay starts immediately after writing the title on the same pages. Start the first page of your essay by writing the four lines of information at the top-left corner of the first page. 

This information includes your name, your professor’s name, the subject name, and the submission data in date-month-year format. After this information, add your essay title at the centre of the page. If your professor asks you to add a separate title page, you can include a title page.

3: Essay Headings and Subheadings

The purpose of the headings and subheadings is to structure a paper in such a way that it becomes easy to understand for the readers. In MLA formatting style, the headings are typically written in the title case and aligned with the left margin. When you write the headings in your MLA formatting essay, make sure that there is no period added after them.

The font size and style of these headings must be kept the same as the rest of the body text. To differentiate the headings from the subheadings, you can use boldface for headings and italics for the subheadings. Just make sure that these headings and subheadings improve the consistency of your overall essay. 

4: The Main Body of Your Essay

Now, it’s time to come on the formatting of your essay’s main body in MLA style. This section should follow the clear formatting rule to improve the overall readability of the paper. 

To maintain consistent formatting rules within the essay body, follow the rules below:

  • For in-text citations of the sources, add the last name of the author and the page number within the parentheses after the text or idea that you have extracted from the source. For instance,

           Education is the cornerstone of societal development (Albert 2011)

  • If you are using some quoted words in your essay, and this quote is longer than four lines, then make it a block and indent the overall text from the left margin by one inch without any quotation marks.
  • Remember to write the text in double-spaced throughout the essay and write the first line of every paragraph by 0.5 inches indent. These two things will make your essay easy to navigate and structured.

5: Essay Work Cited Page

In an MLA format essay, a works cited page must be included at the end of the document to help the readers find all the sources from which you have gathered information for your essay. Write the heading ‘Work Cited’ at the centre of the page. After the title, enter a space and then start adding your references in MLA format.

On this page, all the sources are listed in alphabetical order with respect to the writer’s name. In case no author is available in your source, alphabetize by the first significant word of the title. Each entry in this list uses a hanging indent, and the next subsequent entry is indented by 0.5 inches.

Different sources are cited in different ways in the MLA formatting method:

  • Book: The last name of the author, the first name of the author. The title of the book is in title case, and the year of publication.

Example: Jackson, Liam. The Impact of Social Media, 2020.

  • Journal Article: The last name of the author, the first name of the author. “The title of the article in parentheses” journal name, volume number, the publication year, page number.

Example: William Brown. “The Role of Empathy in Nursing.” The National Library of Medicine, vol. 45, 2002, pp 21-28.

  • Online Source: “The title of the study.” The publisher, the year of the publication, and the URL

Example: “The Reasons Behind Climate Change.” NASA, 2022, www.nasa.gov/climatechangefacts

6: Footnotes or Endnotes in MLA Formatting

Generally, footnotes or endnotes are not added in the MLA formatting style; however, there are a few situations when these notes can be used. Have a look at what these are:

  • A Series of Sources: If one line of your essay requires multiple citations, then it is good to cite all of them in endnotes or footnotes rather than in-text citations.
  • Flagging Editions or Translations: Some literary essays require classic works, which have more than one version. You can use the endnotes to mention the edition or translation you are using. Remember that you only need to mention this reference for only one time.
  • Deviations from the Standard Paper: It is important to use the endnotes or footnotes when you are not following the standard documentation format, like when you are adding the citation number instead of page numbers for poetry.
  • Content Notes: If you need to add personal commentary in your essay, then you have to add endnotes or footnotes to add this commentary in a professional writing tone.

To indicate that a note is added, place a superscript number (1) at the end of the sentence. In case the note is placed in the middle of the sentence, add the signal for the note with a punctuation mark.  

7: MLA Format for Adding a Table in an Essay

If you need to add a table in your essay, then follow the rules below for adding a table in MLA format:

  • The heading of the table is labelled as ‘Table’ in a descriptive title. This title is placed just above the table in a separate line and in boldface. No punctuation mark is required after writing the table heading.
  • Like the entire text of the essay, this table is also double-spaced.
  • You need to add a caption below the table. This caption comprises the information about the source from which you have collected the data for this table. Also, if the table contains your original work, then there is no need to add the caption.
  • If you need to add some explanatory notes in your table, add a superscript with the text, which explanation is required and add the information at the bottom of the page in footnotes.

8: MLA Format for Figures

The figures in your essay are added in a separate section. This section is labelled as ‘Figures’ and placed at the centre of the page. After writing the figure label on the page, add your figure, and below this figure, add a caption with the abbreviated form of the ‘Figure’.

After writing the abbreviated form ‘fig’, add the figure number and a period. Then write the caption for the image, comprising the information about the source of the information. When you cite the figures in the text, use the lower case. Further, there is no need for the alignment of the figures in the MLA style. 

MLA Format Essay Example

For better understanding, let’s have a look at some examples of essays structured in MLA format. The first example is by Ocean County College. Let’s see how the writer structured this paper.

The next one is by SciSpace.

Expert Tips to Best Use the MLA Format for an Essay

Now that you have learned all the rules to format your essay in MLA style, we hope that you can now format your paper effectively. We recommend some additional tips that will help you to further polish and refine your paper.

Check out what these tips are:

  • Double-check the margins, font size, and spacing of your essay and ensure that all these things are consistent throughout the document because small formatting errors can make your overall document inconsistent.
  • Write the italic title for the long-form papers, such as books or films, and quotation marks for the short-form documents, like articles, poems, etc.
  • If you are writing your document on your computer, then save your document frequently in cloud storage to avoid accidental data loss.
  • Always proofread your in-text citations and the work cited page to make sure that every source is referenced and listed correctly in the list.
  • Never use excessive block quotes, as they can impact the overall consistency of your document. Therefore, integrate the shorter sentences to get a smooth flow in your writing.
  • In case you are adding images and tables in your essay, make sure that each element is correctly referenced in your paper.
  • Keep the sentence structure simple and easy to understand. Unnecessary flowery and complex sentences can confuse your readers.
  • You can use the MLA formatting tools or citation generators to avoid all the errors in your formatting. However, despite using these tools, we recommend that you double-check your paper.
  • Also, you can approach reliable essay writing agency to make sure that your entire essay is well-structured and written with the right MLA formatting.

MLA Format Essay – Common Mistakes to Avoid

Students usually make some common MLA formatting mistakes while writing their essays. These mistakes can become a reason for losing valuable academic grades. Therefore, it is important to get to know these common mistakes, so they can avoid them while writing their essays in MLA format.

  1. Sometimes, students write their entire essay in double-spaced format, but forget their work-cited page. This small mistake gives an inconsistent look to their overall paper structure.
  2. In the work cited page, all the reference entries are placed in alphabetical order. However, students often skip this formatting rule and submit their essays without placing references alphabetically. This small mistake can leave a negative impact on their professors.
  3. Another big mistake that students can make is that they add both the footnotes and the endnotes in their essays. It is absolutely unacceptable.
  4. Indenting paragraphs at 0.5 inch is an important MLA formatting rule for essays, which gives a flawless look to the entire essay. When students don’t indent the paragraphs, they make their essay structure hard to understand for the students.

Conclusion

To sum up, it is important to follow the right MLA formatting rules to ensure that your essay has a consistent structure. This consistent structure makes your entire essay easy to read for the audience. 

The key guidelines of this writing style include using 1-inch page margins, 12-point Times New Roman font, and double spacing in the entire document, including the work-cited page.

Also, writing the title of the essay at the centre, adding images and tables with the proper captions, and adding the page number in the running header of the essay are some other MLA formatting rules. 

In addition, write the authors’ names and the studies’ titles in the work cited page as the guidelines outlined in our guide. We hope that our guide will help structure your essay in the MLA format correctly.

FAQs

1: How is MLA Different from APA?

MLA format style is different from APA style in various ways. Below are some major differences between these styles:

  • This is no title page is required in the MLA format, while in APA format it is essential.
  • There is no defined format of headings and subheadings in the MLA format, while the APA format has defined rules for headings and subheadings.
  • The reference list is named as the ‘Work Cited’ in the MLA style. On the other hand, it is titled as the ‘References’ in the APA format.
  • In the in-text citation in MLA formatting, first the author’s last name is written and then the first. In the APA format, after writing the last name of the author, only the initials of the first name are required, not the whole name. 

2: What is the Font Size Used in the MLA Formatting Style?

Generally, it is advised to use a font size and style which is easy to read for the audience. However, the most common font style that is used in MLA formatting is Arial or Times New Roman. And the font size is 11-point or 12-point, as both are easily readable. It is good to check the guidelines provided by your teacher to get to know what font size and style he advises you to use.