MLA Citation Guide (9th ed.)

• Formatting Guidelines
• How to Create a Hanging Indent
• Long URL?
• How to Insert a Running Head

Formatting Guidelines

In addition to laying out citation principles, MLA 9th ed. stipulates formatting for student assignments. Some of the basic conventions are as follows: 

• At minimum, student assignments should feature a heading and title on the first page, appropriate pagination, a main body of the text, and a Works Cited page. 
• Double-space all pages, including long quotations and the Works Cited. 
• Use one-inch margins, a 12-point easy-to-read font (such as Times New Roman), and left-justified main body text. 
• Centre your essay title before your first paragraph, and capitalize all principal words in the title (e.g., The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire). Place quotations in quotation marks, or minor or major work titles in quotation marks or italics, as appropriate. 
• Leave one space only after all punctuation marks, including periods. 
• Indent new paragraphs one tab (5-7 spaces). 
• Consecutively number every page in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Include your last name in the header before the page

TITLE PAGE

Unlike some other citation styles, MLA does not require a title page. However, it does have requirements for a heading and title on the first page of the paper, as well as identifying information about you, your instructor, and your class. 

Here is an example title page. 

ORDERING PAPER SECTIONS  

Many student assignments consist only of a heading at the top of the first page, the essay itself, and a Works Cited. However, certain courses may require students to write abstracts or to include appendices. In most instances, tables and charts should appear in the body of the paper as close to the relevant text as possible. However, if you are including something longer, such as a supplemental bibliography or a full copy of a survey questionnaire used to conduct a study, it may be best to include that as appendices or notes. In all of these specialized cases, you will do well to consult the MLA 9th ed. handbook for specific guidelines. 

When it comes to the basics, however, you can organize your sections in the following order: 

1. Title section
2. Abstract (if required)
3. Body of the essay
4. Appendices or notes (if required)
5. Works Cited page(s)

HEADINGS 

In MLA, headings are not typically used unless you are composing a longer work (e.g., a thesis with many chapters). If you feel that headings are necessary in order to break your document up into sections, your main headings will be Level 1 headings, and any subheadings will follow the format for Level 2 and 3 headings successively. This is how headings are formatted:  

Level 1 Heading 
[Centred, Bold Font, and Main Words Capitalized]

Level 2 Subheading 
[Left-justified, Normal Font, and Main Words Capitalized]
Level 3 Subheading 
[Left-justified, Italicized Font, and Main Words Capitalized]

WORKS CITED

• The list of works cited appears at the end of the paper, after any endnotes
• Centre the heading, Works Cited, an inch from the top of the page 
• Use the same font, font size, and margins as the rest of your document 
• Double-space each entry 
• Each entry should be flush with the left margin and formatted with a hanging indent 
• The Works Cited should be alphabetized by author 
• When one author has multiple works cited, list the author name once and order subsequent entries alphabetically by title of source, using an em dash (--) to begin each entry/refer back to the author. 

Here is an example Works Cited page.  

When completing citations, remember to consult the list of up to nine core elements to ensure that you have adequately accounted for all. necessary referential information. 

How to Create a Hanging Indent

All but the first line of each Works Cited entry should be indented (called a hanging indent). One way to achieve this effect is as follows: 

Long URL?

Whenever possible, use permalinks or Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to link to your materials, as these URLs are static and will not change. As a rule of thumb, any URL running more than 3 full lines should be shortened. However, MLA 9th ed. does not recommend the use of link shortening services such as Bitly or TinyURL. Rather, they ask that excessively long URLs be shortened to the main URL of the host website: e.g., rather than https://library.macewan.ca/writing-centre/, one would write https://library.macewan.ca/. 
 

How to Insert a Running Head

In MLA 9th ed., the only running head (header) information required is, right-justified, the author surname and page number (e.g., Josephson 1). Should there be multiple author surnames which do not easily fit, use only the page number. 

• How to Insert a Header in Microsoft Word
• How to Insert a Header in Google Docs