MLA Documentation

Front Page  Student Name  Teacher’s Name  Course Title  Date (day month year)  Last Name in top right hand corner with page numbers  Title Center (12pt. Not underlined)

Page Setup  One inch margins top, bottom, and sides  Double space  Return once after last sentence of paragraph, indent 5 spaces (tab) to start new paragraph  12 pt Font, Times New Roman

In Text Citations  Parenthetical Citation: (Act.Scene.line-line). If there is no Act or Scene, simply put l. 25 for one line or ll for several lines.  The parenthetical ( ) goes after the end quotation marks. You put the period of the sentence after the parenthetical.  Use a back slash, spaced on both sides to separate lines from each other.  If what you are quoting contains uncommon punctuation, that punctuation belongs inside the quote, and you MUST add another punctuation mark at the end of the close parenthesis to close the sentence.

In Text Citations  The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is truly a sad story; Price puts it best in the last line of the play stating that “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” ( ).  Capulet expresses his rage in saying “Out thee baggage!” (5.3.26).

In Text Citations  When Shakespeare states in his Prologue to Romeo and Juliet “Two households, both alike in dignity / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene” (ll.1-2), he is making the reader aware that both the Capulets and the Montagues are of the same social-economic class and living in the same city. This matters to the reader because now the reader is aware that both families are starting on a level playing field for the start of the play.

Regular Quoting  Remember that quotes that are less than 4 lines long need to be INCORPORATED into the text.

Introduce your quotes  When Romeo states in Act 3, Scene 4 that “blah, blah, blah,” (lines) he is expressing his feelings toward Tybalt and why he can not fight him.  In other words DON’T start a sentence with a quote, unless you are really extremely sly about it, and this takes years of learning before you can do it correctly.

Block Quotes  When the lines of poetry you are quoting contains four or more lines, you must block quote the lines.  Introduce the quote with a colon.  Do NOT use quotation marks or slashes to separate lines!  Set it off by two tab (10 spaces) from the margin, and double space them.  In block quotes the citation goes after the last line of the quote and NOT behind the close parenthesis.

Block Quotes  Juliet speaks about her love for Romeo despite his name in Act 2, Scene 2 saying: ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? (41-45)