All electronic files must be doc or docx files (not rtf., txt., or any other extension).

. . . are neither necessary nor welcome. They only add bulk (real or virtual). Please do not use covers of any kind.

Instead of a cover, on the upper-left corner of the page, include the following information: name, date, course and section number, and my name. Example:

Dana Johansen

19 October, 2023

ENGL 341, Section 001

Dr. Nanian

Why all this information besides your name and date? You should get in the habit of including the course and section number because some professors teach multiple sections of multiple courses and assign similar (or at least similar appearing) essays in each. It is helpful for them to know instantly by looking at the title page what stack it belongs in. (This is especially true when handing in papers in hard-copy form, but you might as well be consistent.) As for the professor’s name, occasionally a professor has been known to put down a student essay somewhere, such as in the break room. If his or her name is on it, some kind passerby is likely to put it in the appropriate mailbox; without a professor’s name, you are pretty much out of luck. Remember: “absent-minded professor” is not just a cliché — it’s a way of life.  (This happened once to a friend of mine when I was a student. A professor claimed he did not receive her essay; a day later it showed up in his mailbox, and he had already commented on two-thirds of it.)

Center the title and begin it one double-spaced line below the paper information. Do not arbitrarily skip down five or six lines so that your title is in the middle of the first page. If you have a subtitle, do not skip any extra lines after the title — just double-space. The text of your essay should then begin on the next double-spaced line.

“The Cheer and Comfort of My Eye”: Surveillance in Hamlet

Remember that when centering anything you need to set the indentation at zero. If the length of the title and subtitle combined requires more than one line, put the subtitle on a separate line. However, in this case, you do not need a colon between them.

For peer responses, simply title your response “Response to [your peer’s name and title of his or her essay]”

Every document you submit should have a running header, meaning a header that appears on ever page of the document. In MLA, the running header consists of your last name and the page number only, in 10 or 12 point Times New Roman, in the upper right-hand corner. Example:

 Johansen 2

Do not put additional page numbers at the bottom of the page (except, if you wish, the first page). The first page should not have the header on it.

Please use the Header and Footer function in MS Word to make your headers. It saves time and prevents format problems.

1" all around. This has been the standard margin for ages. However, MSWord has its default left and right margins set at 1.25". To get to the settings, click on the lower-right corner of the Paragraph window at the top of the document. I suggest that you then save those settings as your “Normal” template. That way, you will never have to worry about changing the settings again, at least on your own computer.

Margins are important because they distort the apparent length of the text, and professors and publishers both want to count on an apparently five-page paper actually being longer than an apparently four-page paper.

For everything except the title, subtitle, and the subsequent page header, the only acceptable font is 12 point Times New Roman. The title and subtitle may be slightly larger; the subsequent page header may be slightly smaller. Set this as your default font.

MLA officially calls for left justification, but I like the look of full justification, so I’ll accept either.

.5" inch indent for the first line of each new paragraph. Do not skip extra lines or put extra space between paragraphs. (Talk about a cheesy way to artificially inflate the length of the paper!) Note: the default setting in MS Word sometimes has 10 or 12 point of extra space set after paragraph breaks. Go to the Paragraph window (as you did for margins) and set it to zero. Again, saving the new setting as your “Normal” template will mean you do not have to worry about this again.

According to MLA, the entire text of your paper — including set-off quotations and the Works Cited page — should be double-spaced.

Do not use tabs in MS Word documents. Ever. The tab button is a relic left over from the days of typewriters, and using them to indent anything today is like hooking up an Xbox to a twelve-inch black and white TV. In a word processing program, using tabs (for example, when indenting a quotation or trying to create a hanging indent in a Works Cited) can cause so many problems that you will be ready to hurl your computer out a window after struggling with them for ten minutes. Use menus instead. That is what they are there for, and they work almost perfectly. Note: Trying to indent your text by hitting the space bar multiple times is even worse.