MLA 9th Edition Paper Formatting Guide

In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to format your paper using MLA 9th edition. I'm going to cover everything you need to know, including margins, font settings, line spacing, headings, referencing, and much, much more. I'm also going to share with you our free MLA paper template, as well as some other useful little tools and resources to simplify your writing process. So let's get started. Hey, this is Derek from GradCoach. If it's your first time here, the GradCoach channel is where we cover all things research and academic writing related. In this video, I'll be using our free MLA template to walk you through the 9th edition requirements. If you want to grab a copy of that template, you can find the link in the description. As I mentioned, that's completely free, but alternatively, we do also offer a comprehensive done-for-you editing service. where you just send us your paper and we'll do all the legwork to make sure that it's 100% MLA aligned. If you want to learn more about that, you can check out the link in the description. With that out the way, let's kick off by opening up our free template so that we can look at each section in detail. Right, so here we have our sample paper formatted in MLA 9 edition. And the first thing we'll talk about is the actual page setup. So the first Issue at hand is the margin and your margin needs to be set at one inch or round. To do that, you can click up here on layout and you can go to margins. And by default in Word, you should have a one inch or round margin. In any case, if not, you can just change that over there. Now, the next thing that you need to sort out is the font. And MLA is a little bit more relaxed in terms of what they allow. Essentially, you can use any sort of well-established font like Times New Roman or Calibri in size 12 or size 11. And that's completely acceptable. I do say well-established because you don't want to be using some strange hyper-stylistic font that goes and impacts your readability of the document in a negative fashion. So just stick to Times New Roman or Calibri. And then from there, the next thing we need to look at is the line spacing. And... the line spacing that you will use throughout your document is double line spacing and to set that you'll click on paragraph over there then you'll go down to this little icon and you will set everything to size 2 which is already done here one other thing that you'll also want to do is you'll want to remove all the additional lines after the paragraph or after any paragraph and to do that you'll select this little option down here so when it comes to line spacing remember you need double line spacing or size two and you need to remove the space after the paragraph then the next thing that you need to take care of is your header and the requirements for MLA are that you have a running page number up in the top right hand corner and that needs to be preceded by your last name now in words online version which we're using here for some reason the header doesn't actually show in the screen version but we can open that up over here and then you can see that it clearly states the student's name in this case we just use the dummy last name jones and this over here is the page number if we were to just recreate that from scratch we just go and write in the name and then you would go to insert and page numbers and then you just click this little one over yes now you can see top right every page it will have the student's last name and the number of the page which is perfect So that takes care of the generic formatting requirements. And so what we can look at now is the rest of the first page. Now, unlike APA, you don't need a title page unless your university specifically requires it. So you'll just get straight into your paper on the first page. But what you do need to set up is just the first few lines. And specifically what's required is on the first line, your name, on the second line, your professor's name, on the... third line your course name and course code and then the date and that date needs to be fully spelled out as you can see 28 october not 28-11 or any other sort of numerical format you want to type out the month completely all of these components as you can see are left aligned and there's no bold facing there's no italicization you just keep it completely standard in the font of your choice From there, the next thing to take care of is the title of the paper. And that is simply on the next line and it is centered. It's not bold faced. But one thing that you do need to do, which we've not done yet, which was just sort out, is write your title in title case. And title case means. capitalizing the first letter of main words so the way that you can do that the easiest way to do that is just to use a title case converter which i will show you how to do so let me just flick over to a title case converter we'll include a link to this resource in the description now we can just set it to mla that's converted and now we have that title in title case so we can just flick back over and paste it in over here perfect once the title sorts it out you can start your paragraph on the next line and the important thing to take note of here is that the first line of any paragraph is indented a half an inch so that is the case here and if it wasn't let's just pull that back the way that you indent paragraph is just simply to put the cursor before the first letter and press tab you don't need to do anything special you don't need to use you any rulers or anything like that and certainly don't use the spacebar you can just hit tab and it will indent it for you perfectly so with mla7 every new paragraph and new heading will start on a new line and you don't need any additional line you just started fresh on a new line with double spacing as i mentioned you also need to make sure that with each new paragraph you start the first line with and indent in terms of internal headings and titles and so forth mla is quite relaxed about how you format these things essentially you can format them in whatever way you like as long as that is consistent in other words that all your level ones look the same that your level twos look the same etc in terms of hard rules around headings one thing that you do need to be aware of is that for any heading level that you create in other words level one or level two or level three you need to have at least two instances of it so if you're going to create heading level one you need to have at least two headings that are formatted in heading level one same for level two level three one other little nuance that you need to be aware of is that your heading should never be in all caps you can just stick to title case in other words capitalizing the first letter of the main words next up something that's worth noting is the topic of abbreviations within an MLA formatted document. So within MLA, there are specific abbreviations that are allowed or that are standardized, and you do want to stick to these. For example, you'd use vol or V-O-L and a period to denote volume. You'd use E-D and a period to denote addition, F-I-G to denote figure and so forth. So there are quite a few standardized abbreviations that you need to be aware of. We'll link to a page that shows you all of these and you can use that as your reference point whenever you're writing up anything in MLA. You can find the link to that in the description. Next up, let's talk about citations. So with MLA, the citation format is a little bit unique in that it is always using the author's last name and the page number. So that is a bit of a deviation from what you probably most commonly see is the author date system. And for example, APA. So with MLA, you're going to have your author's last name followed by the page number. In terms of the formats of citations, there are essentially two formats that you can use. This is much like the author date format where you can have a parenthetical citation. In other words, a citation that is placed fully within parentheses, within brackets. And here's an example of one over here. And the other type of citation that you can have is what's called a narrative citation. And this is where the actual citation is more woven into the sentence itself. So you can see here that this one actually mentions the author's name up front and actively speaks about him. Jefferson proposes that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then right at the end, the only thing in parentheses is the page number. So that's just something to be aware of, that there are these two different types of citations. And the way that you format them is different. This is really useful to just mix things up a little bit, to have some diversity in terms of your writing style, so that you're not constantly just using one style of citation. So that wraps up the most important points with regards to the body content within an MLA paper. So the next thing that we need to look at is the reference list, or in MLA it's called works. cited. In terms of the specific requirements for the works cited what you'll need to do is you'll need to start this on a new page and you'll need to have the heading specifically titled works cited that needs to be centered no bold facing nothing special there. Then you will list out all of your references all of the resources that you cited within. in your document and you'll do that in alphabetical order of the last name so you can see here that it's doe first then green second then go scene and as with the rest of the document you'll use two-point line spacing but unlike the rest of the documents you'll use what's called a hanging indent so what a hanging indent is is an indent that comes into play on the second line of any sentence that is rolled over the end of the page so you can see in this case let's look at this citation over here that this is quite a long one and it starts flush left and then on the second line and everything from the second line onward it is indented by a half an inch so to do that you'll just highlight whatever content you're wanting to indent and you'll go up to paragraph and you'll go to this little section over here called special indent and you will select hanging and you can see that that is already selected what's really important to note is that the exact information that you need to list within this works cited section for each resource depends on what type of resource it is so you can see here that i've commented on the side of each of these that each of these are different types of resources so web page you can see has relatively little information with regards to the resource whereas a journal article over here requires quite a bit of information And there are some very important little intricacies regarding how these things are formatted. You can see here that certain sections are italicized and you can see here the abbreviations are being used and they need to be used in a very specific way. So there is a lot of detail, a lot of nuance and a lot of little intricacies in terms of how exactly you have to format. each of these resources and especially depending on what kind of resource it is whether it's a journal article or book or book chapter what i would strongly strongly recommend is not to do this manually in other words not to be sitting writing out your reference list and trying to format everything exactly according to the mla guide what i would suggest is that you use a reference management software something like zotero or perhaps mendeley you those are just two options and they're completely free and what the reference management software will do is will take care of all of this for you you just need to put the details into the software itself and then it will generate this list for you perfectly formatted as you see it here if you're not familiar with that sort of software we do have instructional videos covering each of those so i'll again link to those in the description and you can go check those out whatever you do do not try to write out your reference list for any paper that consists of more than a handful of references. You're just bound to get caught in the mud trying to get all of these little details right. Just use the software, use a reference manager. All right, so that covers the basics of how to format your paper for MLA 9th edition. Please do keep in mind that what we've gone over here are some of the most common aspects of MLA, but naturally we haven't covered them all. everything possible in every possible scenario. After all, the full MLA manual is 400 plus pages long. So if we've missed anything that you need more information on, just pop a comment below and we'll do our best to help you. Alternatively, as I mentioned, we do also offer a full done for you editing service where we take care of all the MLA formatting for you along with a whole host of other checks and fixes. If you're interested in that, check out the link. in the description. One last thing to point out, and it might be obvious, but it's still important for me to say it, is that if your university has specified anything that contrasts with what we've discussed here, please do follow their guidance. Some universities and programs do have slight variations on the standard MLA requirements. And if that's the case, you definitely want to make sure that you follow them. I know it's a bit annoying, but they make the rules. All right, so that's a wrap. for today if you got value from the video please do hit that like button to help other students find this information and also be sure to subscribe for more tips and tutorials regarding pretty much everything research and academic writing related until next time good luck

If it's your first time here, the GradCoach channel is where we cover all things research and academic writing related. In this video, I'll be using our free MLA template to walk you through the 9th edition requirements. If you want to grab a copy of that template, you can find the link in the description.

As I mentioned, that's completely free, but alternatively, we do also offer a comprehensive done-for-you editing service. where you just send us your paper and we'll do all the legwork to make sure that it's 100% MLA aligned. If you want to learn more about that, you can check out the link in the description. With that out the way, let's kick off by opening up our free template so that we can look at each section in detail.

Right, so here we have our sample paper formatted in MLA 9 edition. And the first thing we'll talk about is the actual page setup. So the first Issue at hand is the margin and your margin needs to be set at one inch or round. To do that, you can click up here on layout and you can go to margins.

And by default in Word, you should have a one inch or round margin. In any case, if not, you can just change that over there. Now, the next thing that you need to sort out is the font.

And MLA is a little bit more relaxed in terms of what they allow. Essentially, you can use any sort of well-established font like Times New Roman or Calibri in size 12 or size 11. And that's completely acceptable. I do say well-established because you don't want to be using some strange hyper-stylistic font that goes and impacts your readability of the document in a negative fashion.

So just stick to Times New Roman or Calibri. And then from there, the next thing we need to look at is the line spacing. And...

the line spacing that you will use throughout your document is double line spacing and to set that you'll click on paragraph over there then you'll go down to this little icon and you will set everything to size 2 which is already done here one other thing that you'll also want to do is you'll want to remove all the additional lines after the paragraph or after any paragraph and to do that you'll select this little option down here so when it comes to line spacing remember you need double line spacing or size two and you need to remove the space after the paragraph then the next thing that you need to take care of is your header and the requirements for MLA are that you have a running page number up in the top right hand corner and that needs to be preceded by your last name now in words online version which we're using here for some reason the header doesn't actually show in the screen version but we can open that up over here and then you can see that it clearly states the student's name in this case we just use the dummy last name jones and this over here is the page number if we were to just recreate that from scratch we just go and write in the name and then you would go to insert and page numbers and then you just click this little one over yes now you can see top right every page it will have the student's last name and the number of the page which is perfect So that takes care of the generic formatting requirements. And so what we can look at now is the rest of the first page. Now, unlike APA, you don't need a title page unless your university specifically requires it.

So you'll just get straight into your paper on the first page. But what you do need to set up is just the first few lines. And specifically what's required is on the first line, your name, on the second line, your professor's name, on the...

third line your course name and course code and then the date and that date needs to be fully spelled out as you can see 28 october not 28-11 or any other sort of numerical format you want to type out the month completely all of these components as you can see are left aligned and there's no bold facing there's no italicization you just keep it completely standard in the font of your choice From there, the next thing to take care of is the title of the paper. And that is simply on the next line and it is centered. It's not bold faced. But one thing that you do need to do, which we've not done yet, which was just sort out, is write your title in title case.

And title case means. capitalizing the first letter of main words so the way that you can do that the easiest way to do that is just to use a title case converter which i will show you how to do so let me just flick over to a title case converter we'll include a link to this resource in the description now we can just set it to mla that's converted and now we have that title in title case so we can just flick back over and paste it in over here perfect once the title sorts it out you can start your paragraph on the next line and the important thing to take note of here is that the first line of any paragraph is indented a half an inch so that is the case here and if it wasn't let's just pull that back the way that you indent paragraph is just simply to put the cursor before the first letter and press tab you don't need to do anything special you don't need to use you any rulers or anything like that and certainly don't use the spacebar you can just hit tab and it will indent it for you perfectly so with mla7 every new paragraph and new heading will start on a new line and you don't need any additional line you just started fresh on a new line with double spacing as i mentioned you also need to make sure that with each new paragraph you start the first line with and indent in terms of internal headings and titles and so forth mla is quite relaxed about how you format these things essentially you can format them in whatever way you like as long as that is consistent in other words that all your level ones look the same that your level twos look the same etc in terms of hard rules around headings one thing that you do need to be aware of is that for any heading level that you create in other words level one or level two or level three you need to have at least two instances of it so if you're going to create heading level one you need to have at least two headings that are formatted in heading level one same for level two level three one other little nuance that you need to be aware of is that your heading should never be in all caps you can just stick to title case in other words capitalizing the first letter of the main words next up something that's worth noting is the topic of abbreviations within an MLA formatted document. So within MLA, there are specific abbreviations that are allowed or that are standardized, and you do want to stick to these. For example, you'd use vol or V-O-L and a period to denote volume.

You'd use E-D and a period to denote addition, F-I-G to denote figure and so forth. So there are quite a few standardized abbreviations that you need to be aware of. We'll link to a page that shows you all of these and you can use that as your reference point whenever you're writing up anything in MLA. You can find the link to that in the description.

Next up, let's talk about citations. So with MLA, the citation format is a little bit unique in that it is always using the author's last name and the page number. So that is a bit of a deviation from what you probably most commonly see is the author date system. And for example, APA.

So with MLA, you're going to have your author's last name followed by the page number. In terms of the formats of citations, there are essentially two formats that you can use. This is much like the author date format where you can have a parenthetical citation. In other words, a citation that is placed fully within parentheses, within brackets. And here's an example of one over here.

And the other type of citation that you can have is what's called a narrative citation. And this is where the actual citation is more woven into the sentence itself. So you can see here that this one actually mentions the author's name up front and actively speaks about him.

Jefferson proposes that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then right at the end, the only thing in parentheses is the page number. So that's just something to be aware of, that there are these two different types of citations.

And the way that you format them is different. This is really useful to just mix things up a little bit, to have some diversity in terms of your writing style, so that you're not constantly just using one style of citation. So that wraps up the most important points with regards to the body content within an MLA paper. So the next thing that we need to look at is the reference list, or in MLA it's called works. cited.

In terms of the specific requirements for the works cited what you'll need to do is you'll need to start this on a new page and you'll need to have the heading specifically titled works cited that needs to be centered no bold facing nothing special there. Then you will list out all of your references all of the resources that you cited within. in your document and you'll do that in alphabetical order of the last name so you can see here that it's doe first then green second then go scene and as with the rest of the document you'll use two-point line spacing but unlike the rest of the documents you'll use what's called a hanging indent so what a hanging indent is is an indent that comes into play on the second line of any sentence that is rolled over the end of the page so you can see in this case let's look at this citation over here that this is quite a long one and it starts flush left and then on the second line and everything from the second line onward it is indented by a half an inch so to do that you'll just highlight whatever content you're wanting to indent and you'll go up to paragraph and you'll go to this little section over here called special indent and you will select hanging and you can see that that is already selected what's really important to note is that the exact information that you need to list within this works cited section for each resource depends on what type of resource it is so you can see here that i've commented on the side of each of these that each of these are different types of resources so web page you can see has relatively little information with regards to the resource whereas a journal article over here requires quite a bit of information And there are some very important little intricacies regarding how these things are formatted.

You can see here that certain sections are italicized and you can see here the abbreviations are being used and they need to be used in a very specific way. So there is a lot of detail, a lot of nuance and a lot of little intricacies in terms of how exactly you have to format. each of these resources and especially depending on what kind of resource it is whether it's a journal article or book or book chapter what i would strongly strongly recommend is not to do this manually in other words not to be sitting writing out your reference list and trying to format everything exactly according to the mla guide what i would suggest is that you use a reference management software something like zotero or perhaps mendeley you those are just two options and they're completely free and what the reference management software will do is will take care of all of this for you you just need to put the details into the software itself and then it will generate this list for you perfectly formatted as you see it here if you're not familiar with that sort of software we do have instructional videos covering each of those so i'll again link to those in the description and you can go check those out whatever you do do not try to write out your reference list for any paper that consists of more than a handful of references. You're just bound to get caught in the mud trying to get all of these little details right.

Just use the software, use a reference manager. All right, so that covers the basics of how to format your paper for MLA 9th edition. Please do keep in mind that what we've gone over here are some of the most common aspects of MLA, but naturally we haven't covered them all.

everything possible in every possible scenario. After all, the full MLA manual is 400 plus pages long. So if we've missed anything that you need more information on, just pop a comment below and we'll do our best to help you. Alternatively, as I mentioned, we do also offer a full done for you editing service where we take care of all the MLA formatting for you along with a whole host of other checks and fixes.

If you're interested in that, check out the link. in the description. One last thing to point out, and it might be obvious, but it's still important for me to say it, is that if your university has specified anything that contrasts with what we've discussed here, please do follow their guidance.

Some universities and programs do have slight variations on the standard MLA requirements. And if that's the case, you definitely want to make sure that you follow them. I know it's a bit annoying, but they make the rules. All right, so that's a wrap. for today if you got value from the video please do hit that like button to help other students find this information and also be sure to subscribe for more tips and tutorials regarding pretty much everything research and academic writing related until next time good luck

Transcript for:MLA 9th Edition Paper Formatting Guide

Transcript for:
MLA 9th Edition Paper Formatting Guide