A GUIDE TO MLA FORMATTING

Walden Summer Reading & Writing

Basic Format

Type your paper (no handwritten work). Call or email if you need to come in to the school to do this.

Use 12 point font, Times New Roman.Double space your paper.Type your name, grade, and date in upper left

corner of the first page.Center your title at the top of page, right after

your name & date information.Start the body of your paper right after the name

and date. See an example on the next page.

Example of MLA Format

Avoiding Plagiarism

If you put someone else’s words or ideas into your paper without giving that person credit, that is “plagiarism” and it is a serious breech of ethics. In the professional world you can lose your job for doing this. In school, you will fail the assignment, and maybe even the class. It’s important to know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. “If you don't tell whose work it is, you are pretending

the work is your own. This pretending is called 'plagiarism,' and it is just like cheating. It's not fair. It's not nice. It isn't OK. It's stealing" (Simpson, 180).

Using Citations to Avoid Plagiarism

Any time you use an exact quote from a book, you must tell your reader where it comes from and put quotes around the text. For example:

In Chapter One of The Road Home, Chemba Azul writes, “My former world felt so much smaller now. My soul had expanded to try to fill all of India and I no longer fit the tidy, constricted spaces of my parent’s home.”

Using Citations to Avoid Plagiarism

Next, you must add a citation to tell the reader which page your quotation came from:

In Chapter One of The Road Home, Chemba Azul writes, “My former world felt so much smaller now. My soul had expanded to try to fill all of India and I no longer fit the tidy, constricted spaces of my parent’s home” (23).

Notice that the final period comes after the page number.

Using Citations to Avoid Plagiarism

If you don’t want to include the author’s name in your paper, then you must add the author’s last name to the citation:

In Chapter One, Anna laments, “My former world felt so much smaller now. My soul had expanded to try to fill all of India and I no longer fit the tidy, constricted spaces of my parent’s home” (Azul, 23).

Paraphrasing

Many times, you don’t want to quote the book exactly, but you want to share information in your own words. This is perfectly okay, but you still need to indicate where the information comes from. For example:

Anna talked about how much smaller her world felt when she returned home from India. She felt like she no longer belonged in her parent’s home (Azul, 23).

Adding a Bibliography

Add a “Work’s Cited” page at the end of your paper to list all of the books you used in your paper. For this paper, you will probably only use one book.

Put the title “Works Cited” at the top center of the page.

List your books in alphabetical order using the author’s last name, then add first name, book title (in italics), city of publication, colon, publisher, comma, date of publication, then the word “print” if it is a printed book.

Azul, Chemba. The Way Home, New York: World Press, 2012. Print