MLA Outline

Periods go here; commas go there; spelling matters; and each sentence starts with a capital

letter. These are rules that most students have heard or ignored. The rules seem to keep flowing, and

each school year results in more difficulty. High school intensifies the writing process by adding a new

topic: MLA formatting. MLA formatting and organization are the key ingredients to a successful

freshmen level essay.

MLA stands for Modern Language Association and is a format that follows several specific rules.

It is easiest if a student sets his or her essay with the following settings before ever typing a word. First,

a student must make sure to type in Times New Roman, 12 point font. Secondly, the margins need to be

set

The heading should be on

the left hand side with four parts; each part should be on a separate line. The first line should be the

student’s name. The second line should list the teacher’s name. The third line gives the name of the

course, and the last line should give the date in European style. The European style requires no

punctuation and is ordered as day, month, and then year.

After the heading, students should choose appropriate and original titles for their essays. This

means it should not be the title of something else. For example, if an essay is based on the novel To Kill

a Mockingbird, one should not choose To Kill a Mockingbird as the title of his or her essay. The title

should not be a larger font, bold, italicized, etc….If a student includes the title of another work as part of

his or her title, it is appropriate to italicize book titles, magazine titles, etc… within the essay title. For

example, it would be appropriate for an essay titled “Scout: The Gem of To Kill a Mockingbird” to

italicize the book title within the document title. And of course, the title should be centered and double

spaced beneath the