How To Write An Essay In The MLA Format – 10 Free Tips
Essay writing is compulsory in schools. It is a fundamental part of research. Essay writing is an important skill that students should have. Essay writing calls for consistency, thoroughness and completion. Here are 10 free tips in how to write an MLA essay paper.
- Use italics for titles
- Endnotes
- First page format
- Other sections of the essay
- Citing sources
- Paraphrasing
- Direct quotation
- General formatting
The title for the sources cited in the research paper or essay should be italicized. This is done to create emphasis.
They should be on a page of their own. They should be written before writing the bibliography or the page containing works cited.
On the first page of the essay, the following information should appear; your name, the name of the professor, name of the course and the date. They should be on the left side of the document and double spaced. Insert the page number on the upper right corner. The essay title should be centered and appear just below the date.
If there are any sections in the essay, use numbers that are followed by a period. They should be divided accordingly. For example: 1. Section 1, 2, Section 2 etc.
In MLA formatting, we have the ‘works cited’ page. There are various referencing techniques for different sources. A book, an internet source and journal are not referenced in the same way. Here is how a book is referenced.
Surname, First Name.Title of book. Cityof publication. Publisher. Year.Print
The main aim of having this section is to avoid plagiarism by acknowledging the source of the original idea.
Paraphrasing is key when it comes to essay writing. This basically means writing in your own words based on whatever the author of the original source stated. This is an important art that should be learnt. While paraphrasing, the sentence should not lose its meaning.
Knowing when to use direct quotation in your essay is important. They should be used sparingly and only when necessary. Quotation marks must be used at the beginning and the end of the sentence.
The essay should be double spaced. A legible font and font size of 12 should be used. The margins should be set at 1 inch on all sides of the document. The first line of the paragraph should be indented at one and a half an inch from the margin. The use of tab key is recommended for this. Pressing the space bar 5 times gives the same result.