When writing an essay, there are several formatting styles that the essay writer can follow, depending on the requirements of the essay. One of the most common of these formatting styles is the MLA style, which is short for Modern Language Association. Commonly used for essays within the humanities and liberal arts, the MLA style also provides essay writers with a framework through which they can reference their essays and therefore avoid charges of plagiarism (OWL at Purdue, 2009).
Essays with MLA format are normally written on paper of a standard size, usually white paper whose dimensions should be 8.5 inches by 11 inches. The text of the essay should be double-spaced, with the margins of the paper set to one inch on all sides. If headers are used, then the MLA format requires that they be positioned on the upper right end of the paper, and flush with the margins. Other requirements for essays with MLA format is that only legible font of size 12 should be used (OWL at Purdue, 2009).
Unlike the other formats which follow an author-date system of citation, essays with MLA format usually follow the author-page style of citation. Within the text of the essay that follows the MLA format therefore, the name of the author whose work has been used will be given, followed by the number of the page from which the work referred has been obtained (OWL at Purdue, 2009).
Essays with MLA format will also have fundamental differences in their bibliographies from essays that follow other formats. For starters, the bibliographic section of an essay with MLA format is titled “Works Cited” unlike essays that use other formats where the term “References” is used. But more substantially, the MLA essay must have the full last and first names of the author, followed by the year of publication in brackets, and the title of publication (OWL at Purdue, 2009).
