1. Warm-Up

2. MLA Citations (and other things to make your paper A+ ready)
Formatting Your Essay
MLA Citations
(and other things to make your paper A+ ready)

3. Step 1
Make sure your completed essay (Parts 1, 2, and 3) is all on one Word document.
If you’ve been using bullet points or numbered lists, make sure you delete those. By now, you should have nine paragraphs.
Highlight all of your essay (type ctrl and A at the same time).
Make sure your essay is in Times New Roman font, size 12.

4. Step 2 Highlight all of your essay (ctrl+A)
Right-click and select “Paragraph…”
Spacing “Before” and “After” should be 0 pt.
For the Line Spacing drop-down box, select “Double.”
Make sure you haven’t left any blank spaces in between paragraphs. (If you’ve hit “Enter” twice to start a new paragraph, delete that extra line.)
Indent (hit “tab” key) at the beginning ofyour paragraphs.

5. This is not how you double-space.
This is what your essay should look like by now. Notice that the lines are double-spaced, but there is no “extra line” in between paragraphs. Also notice that the font is Times New Roman, size 12.
Notice I’ve indented at the beginning of my paragraphs. I’m running out of things to write in the model so I’m just going to write the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.
This is not what your essay should look like. Watch out for different font and sizing. You might think it’s cute to use swirly big fonts, but in a formal essay it looks like you’re Princess Fluffy Rainbowkins, not an intelligent person who should be taken seriously.
This is not how you double-space.
Don’t press “Enter” twice for every single line.
That’s not double-spacing your essay.
Paragraph One: John Henry
What was life like for African-Americans after the Civil War? You probably need to delete any questions, bullet points, or lists. You just need to write the answers to those questions, and make sure they’re in paragraph form.
Difficult because they had to survive by themselves. (Don’t write this way—write “Life for African- Americans after the Civil War was difficult because they had to survive by themselves”).

6. Step 3
Find all of the quotes (any sentences from the stories or that you copied and pasted from the Internet).
Highlight the quotes. (You’ll un-highlight them later.)
Make sure that you’ve put quotation marks around all of your quotes, like this:
“At the end of 35 minutes, John Henry had drilled two seven foot holes - a total of fourteen feet, while the steam drill had only drilled one nine-foot hole.”
Make sure that you lead into your quotes like this:
John Henry demonstrates heroic qualities when he drills through the Big Bend Mountain: “At the end of 35 minutes, John Henry had drilled two seven foot holes - a total of fourteen feet, while the steam drill had only drilled one nine-foot hole” (Schlosser).

7. Step 4
Now we’re going to make a Works Cited page. Your Works Cited page goes at the end of your essay (this would be the fourth page).
Basically, in your Works Cited page, you list all of the stories, websites, books, articles, etc. that you quoted from.
Find all of the stories, websites, books, articles, etc. that you quoted from in your essay.
Go to

8. Step 5
On home page, make sure you select “MLA” in one of the four orange boxes.
Then, select “Website” if you got your quote from a website.
Copy and paste the link from the website into the search box and continue to final step.

9. Step 5 This is what the citation for John Henry’s story looks like:
Schlosser, S. E. "John Henry: The Steel-Driving Man." Heroes & Champions. AmericanFolklore.net. Web. 2 Apr < e/2010/07/john_henry.html>.
Repeat Step 5 for every website and book you used.

10. This is what a works cited page should look like:

11. Step 6
Now that you’ve put in all the long citations on your Works Cited page, let’s go back and put in the short parenthetical citations into your essay.
You can find out how to write parenthetical citations in the same place where you copied and pasted the websites on but parenthetical citations are pretty easy. Pretty much, you just put the author, (or if you can’t find the author, the story title) in parentheses after the quote. Like this:
Exaggeration is used in the story of Pecos Bill to give this larger-than-life tall tale a humorous tone, such as when Pecos Bill rides a tornado: “It was turning the sky black and green, and roaring so loud it woke up the farmers away over in China” (Schlosser).

12. This is what in-text citation should look like: