Formatting Your Paper
There are tabs up here that give you access to different menus. You'll find the most important options in the Home tab. The first thing we're going to do to fix this paper is to select all text so that we can change the font and paragraph. You can highlight all text by pressing control and A at the same time, or you can click and hold at the beginning of your paper and drag the mouse down until you reach the end of your paper and let go. After you've highlighted everything, you can click on the font selector box in the home tab and choose Times New Roman, which is the required font for MLA format. Then you'll want to choose font-size 12 point, which is the required font size for MLA format. Now we have the correct font and font size.
It's also important that we double-space all lines, so go to the paragraph options, and click the icon for line and paragraph spacing. From the list, we want to choose 2.0 for double space.
Word processing software also tends to add extra space between paragraphs, but MLA format requires just the standard double-space between paragraphs, so you'll need to override this setting as well. You can change the spacing between paragraphs by going to paragraphing advanced settings, by clicking on the icon to expand the panel. In the paragraph, settings make sure that the "before" and "after" boxes say zero in the spacing region. That will ensure that we have no extra spaces between paragraphs.
While we're using this paragraph dialogue, remember that the first line of each paragraph should be indented half an inch. You can do this manually by pressing the tab key, but it's easier to tell your word processing software to indent the first line of each paragraph automatically by going to the paragraph settings, locating the indentation settings, and then choosing "First line." Be sure to hit okay, and you'll see now that all paragraphs are indented properly, with the first line pushed in half-an-inch and the rest of the lines in the paragraph flush to the left margin.
There's one exception to this indentation rule in MLA format. When you create a block quotation, also called a blockquote, a quotation of four lines or more, the whole quotation should be indented half-an-inch, and the first line should not be indented. It should be flush left with the rest of the quotation. To properly indent your block quote, you should click on the second line of the quotation, and the entire paragraph will indent away from the left margin. As you finish off the block quotation by writing a conclusion statement for that paragraph, you'll use the backspace button on the first line that follows the block quote to ensure that the sentence that follows the block quote is flush left. Remember that you should use block quotes sparingly and that they should almost always be followed with a conclusion sentence to tell your reader why the information in the block quotation was important.
And now we notice that there's a lot of space in the margins, so to set the margins to the correct size, we go to "page layout" and change the margins from 1.25, which is generally the default for word processing software to 1 inch in on all sides: top, bottom, left, and right. You can click on the view tab and check the ruler option to see a ruler along the top of your page make sure that your margins are one inch on all sides. Remember that your document's dimensions should be set to 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall.
Now we need to start thinking about our headers. MLA formatted documents should not have a title page. The first-page header should include your name, the instructor's name, the course title, and the date, all left-aligned.
The title should be set in capital letters--no italics, bold, or underlining--and centered, with just a double space above and below.
Each page should have your name and the page number right-aligned in the top margin. You should set the header to create these page numbers automatically.
Double click in the header region to open up the header editing options. You'll see that the header area becomes active for editing. Click on the top left and then type in your name. Then you're going to need to insert a page number. Click on "page number," then insert it at the current position. Then choose a plain number (rather than a Roman numeral or anything else). You'll see the page number was inserted, and it will automatically be updated for each page. Now we need to right-align it, so click on the "Home" tab, and click the icon for right alignment.
To review your formatting, you may want to click the View tab and shrink the view down so you can see more of the paper at a time. You'll see we now have the first page with an appropriate header and title information, and each other page has the appropriate header information as well. In addition, all margins' and paragraphs' spacings are set correctly, including the margin for block quotations. Another tutorial will help you format your works cited page, which is required for any MLA formatted submission.
