MLA Format Essay Template

Why MLA Formatting Costs Students Marks

MLA formatting marks are the easiest on a paper to lose: a cover page nobody asked for, Word's default space between paragraphs, a bolded title, page numbering that starts at two. None of it is about your argument, and all of it is checked.

A Template That Is Already Correct

This page gives you the MLA 9 rules as a checklist, a first page you can copy line for line, the Works Cited patterns for the sources students actually use, and the exact clicks to set it up in Google Docs or Word.

How it works

1. Set 1-inch margins and double spacing, then switch off space after paragraphs
2. Add the four-line header: your name, instructor, course, date as 10 October 2026
3. Centre the title in plain body text — no bold, no italics, no quotation marks
4. Put your surname and the page number flush right on every page, starting at one
5. Start Works Cited on a new page, alphabetise it, and apply a 0.5-inch hanging indent

The MLA 9 page setup, in one table

MLA 9 is a short list of mechanical rules. Nothing here is a matter of taste, and every one of them is checked at a glance by whoever marks your paper.

What MLA 9 actually says about fonts

Almost every guide online tells you MLA requires Times New Roman 12 pt. It does not, and it never has. The handbook asks for a font that is easy to read and in which the italic type is clearly different from the regular type. It suggests 11 to 13 pt as the sensible range and leaves the choice to you.

The first page, line by line

MLA has no title page. The identifying information goes in the top-left corner of page one, double-spaced like everything else, and the essay starts immediately underneath the title.

• Order matters: your name, then the instructor, then the course code, then the date. Four lines, nothing else.
• The running head appears on page one too. Students routinely start numbering at page two; MLA numbers every page.
• No blank line anywhere. The gap between the date and the title is one double-spaced line, not a paragraph break.
• The title is not a heading. Do not bold or enlarge it. Centre it in the same font and size as the body.
• Italicise titles of long works inside your title — Beloved above — but leave your own words plain.

MLA title page: only if you are asked

A standard MLA paper does not have one. If your instructor asks for a separate cover sheet anyway — and many do — MLA has no prescribed layout, so the convention below is what most departments expect.

1. Centre everything vertically and horizontally on an otherwise blank page.
2. Title about a third of the way down, in title case, plain text, no full stop.
3. Your name several double-spaced lines below the title.
4. Course, instructor and date on three further lines at the bottom third.
5. Keep the first-page header anyway unless told otherwise — the cover sheet replaces nothing, it is added in front.

Quotations: short, long and verse

The dividing line is four lines of prose or three lines of verse, measured as the quotation would sit on your page, not as it sits in the original.

In-text citations in MLA carry no comma and no "p.": (Morrison 42), not (Morrison, p. 42). If you have already named the author in your sentence, only the page number goes in the brackets.

• Two authors: (Santos and Reyes 118)
• Three or more: (Santos et al. 118)
• No page numbers, as on most web pages: (Santos)
• Two works by one author: (Morrison, Beloved 42)
• Verse: cite line numbers, not pages — (Eliot, lines 12–14)

The Works Cited page

MLA 9 builds every entry from the same nine core elements, in a fixed order, and you simply skip the ones that do not apply: Author. "Title of Source." Title of Container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.

1. Start a new page. Works Cited never shares a page with your conclusion.
2. Centre the heading — "Works Cited", plain text, no bold, no italics, no quotation marks.
3. Alphabetise by the first element of each entry, which is usually the author's surname and occasionally a title.
4. Hanging indent of 0.5 inch: the first line of each entry sits at the margin and every line after it is indented.
5. Keep it double-spaced within and between entries. No blank lines.
6. Same author, several works: replace the repeated name with three hyphens and alphabetise by title.

A Works Cited page lists only what you cited in the text. A bibliography lists everything you read. MLA asks for the former, so every entry must have a matching in-text citation and every in-text citation must have an entry.

Setting it up in Google Docs and Word

Both applications default to settings that break MLA — Word adds space after paragraphs, Docs starts at 1.15 line spacing. Fix those two first.

The MLA mistakes that actually cost marks

Formatting is usually worth a small, fixed share of the grade, which makes it the cheapest marks on the paper to secure. These are the errors that turn up most often.

• A cover page nobody asked for, with the four-line header deleted along with it.
• Extra space between paragraphs, left on by Word's defaults. MLA is uniformly double-spaced with no gaps.
• A bolded or enlarged title. It is body text, centred.
• Page numbering starting at 2, because the first page was treated as a title page.
• "p." inside the brackets. MLA in-text citations are author and page number only, with no comma.
• A single-spaced Works Cited page, or one with blank lines between entries.
• A faked hanging indent made of tabs and spaces.
• Entries listed in the order you found them rather than alphabetically.
• Sources in the list that are never cited in the text. That is a bibliography, and it is not what was asked for.