MLA Guide

Below is a list of comments (and their context) from the Sample Paper in MLA Format.

Header:

MLA format requires a header on the top right corner of each page of the paper. The header includes the student's last name & page number.

Formatting your name and course information:

The MLA heading for your paper should include your name, your instructor's name, the course, and the date (Day Month Year) – each on a separate line. This information should not be placed in header of Word document but on the first four lines of your document.

Title:

The title of the essay should be centered following the name and course information and before the essay begins.

Example of in-text citation of two authors:

When you are citing a source that has two authors, place both of the author's last names in the parenthetical citation separated by the word 'and.'

For example: Police interrogation tactics can lead to false confessions, and young people with intellectual disabilities are especially vulnerable to this tactic (LaVigne and Miles).

Example of an in-text citation without an author:

When citing a source in-text without an author, you place the title of the article or part of the title in the in-text citation in place of the author. Use the same formatting that you used on the Works Cited entry in regards to italics or quotation marks. If it is a long title, you can shorten it.

For example: In part because of the widespread evidence that his confession was false, Brendan Dassey’s case has been taken up by several innocence projects, including one at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (“Brendan Dassey”).

How to write titles in MLA format:

Titles of Books, Magazines, and Websites are italicized. "Titles of Articles" or "Titles of Parts" are placed within quotation marks. The same format you use in the works cited entry is used for titles within the paper.

For example: In the Berkeley Journal of International Law, Megan Annitto shared evidence from an expert on false confession and police questioning tactics who testified in Dassey’s defense.

Example in-text citation when using the author’s name in the sentence:

If you use the author's name in the sentence, you should not include the author's last name in the in-text citation. In this case, you will simply place the page number(s) (or paragraph numbers if applicable) within the in-text citation if the source has page numbers. If the source does not have page numbers and you're not using paragraph numbers, then you will not have an in-text citation (the author's name in the sentence takes it's place). The same is true if you do not have an author, and instead use the title that comes first in your works cited entry.

In the example below, the author's name appears in the sentence, which means it should not be placed in the in-text citation. However, you must still include the page number, 194. 

For example: In the Berkeley Journal of International Law, Megan Annitto shared evidence from an expert on false confession and police questioning tactics who testified in Dassey’s defense. The expert testified that the confession was coerced, citing a lot of inaccuracies in the statement and calling it “highly contaminated” (194).

Example of a in-text citation from one author without page numbers:

If your source only has one author, you should place the author's last name in the parenthesis. In this example, there are not page numbers. This is also an example of using a direct quote from your source word-for-word, where you have to put quotation marks around the quote and use brackets around any words you have to make small changes to to make the sentence make sense (in this example the original quote had the word 'give' which we changed to 'gave' so that the grammar is correct.

For example: Unfortunately, this is too common an occurrence. In a similar scenario, a psychologist testified that 17-year-old Jesse Misskelley “[gave] police a ‘false statement’ when he could ‘no longer stand the strain of the interrogation’” (Linder).

FYI: If your instructor requires students to count and add paragraphs when there are no page numbers, the Linder example above would look like: (Linder, pars.8 - 10).

Example of an in-text citation with 3 or more authors:

An in-text citation if you have 3 or more authors will use last name of first author and then follow with 'et al.' so that you do not need to list all the authors. The example below also has an odd page number, e1314, but you still include it.

For example: The National Registry of Exonerations reported in 2020 that “of over 3000 exonerations, estimates… suggest that 12% of all known wrongful convictions involved a false confession” (Catlin et al. e1314).

Example of an in-text citation with one author and page numbers:

This is an example of a basic in-text citation. It includes the author's last name and the page numbers within the parenthesis. This is also an example of a paraphrase where we have put information from an outside source into our words/voice, so we do not need quotation marks, but we do still need an in-text citation!

For example: Dassey’s lawyer failed to defend him adequately against his false confession (Annitto 190-191).