MLA Format Samples

Sample of a First Page

Lastname 1

StudentFirst LastName

Dr. Susan Shelangoskie

ENG ### Section

25 August 2015

Title of Essay

In Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," the character of the narrator is revealed through the descriptions of the employees he hires. The personal qualities he highlights in each of the other characters reveals insights about what the narrator values himself.

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Notes

There is a 1" margin on all sides of the text.
The first paragraph is indented half and inch
The page number is in the header of the document, not the body of the document. You should use the automatic pagination feature in your word processor. In Microsoft Word, use "plain" numbering justified to the right.

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Sample of Parenthetical In-Text Citations

Lastname 2

The character of the narrator in the story changes in response to the static behavior from his eccentric employee Bartleby: "As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management of getting rid of Bartleby" (Melville 169). As this passage demonstrates, the narrator's attitude changes swiftly, over the course of a walk home, from "pity" to "vanity," and the narrator will continue to vacillate in his attitude toward Bartleby as the story continues. Because of this tendency to change, the narrator can be described as a round character.

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Notes

Use double quotations; if there is dialogue within the quotation, use single quotations to indicate the direct speech
When introducing a quotation with a complete sentence, use a colon before the quotation
There is no punctuation between the author last name and the page number
The author last name does not need to be repeated (after the first use) until a different text is cited
The parenthetical citation should be placed after the quotation mark and before the end punctuation (or next punctuation mark)
American: "vanity," etc. British: "vanity", etc. You are in America.

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Sample of Citing Poetry

In Shakespeare's text, the speaker describes his love in terms of what she is not, for example:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun. (1074 lines 1-3)

The speaker's use of antithesis in these lines highlights both the ordinariness of his love and that absurdity of the typical comparisons found in the conventions of courtly love. As the poem goes on, however, the speaker's lady love is less and less appealing: "And in some perfumes there is more delight / Than in the breath that from by mistress reeks" (1074 lines 7-8). Though the modern meaning of reeks is more pejorative than in Shakespeare's day, these lines effectively convey that it is not only the physical appearance of the lady, but attributes of the lady that appeal to other senses, like smell, that puncture the usual idealization of women.

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Notes

When quoting 3 or more lines of poetry, replicate the poetry as it is written, including line breaks
In this case (>3 lines), the parenthetical citation should go after the end punctuation (this is true for block quotes of prose as well).
When quoting fewer than 3 lines of poetry, line breaks must still be indicated. Use the forward slash with a space on each side (as shown above) to indicate line breaks.

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Sample of Works Cited

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion Linda Bree, editor. Broadview, 2004.

Dowling, Ellen. "The Derailment of A Streetcar Named Desire." Literature Film Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 4, 1981, pp. 233-40. MLA Bibliography,

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Kelly J. Mays, editor. Shorter 12th ed. W. W. Norton, 2016, pp. 153-78.

Notes

If you're looking for the citation information for any of the texts we've studied, check the syllabus under "texts"
The "Works Cited" can be listed after the end of your essay rather than on a new page.
You are welcome to use the auto-formatting feature of programs like Zotero or Word, but some of these programs are smarter than others, and many do not format works from anthologies correctly, so be sure to double-check your results to see that they look like the samples here.

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