Formatting the College Essay

In this presentation, the goal is to explain the importance of MLA format.

Picture of a Sample Paper with MLA Format

Sample of MLA Paper

I. Reason for MLA Format

Recognize that we all participate in several language communities on any given day. For students those language communities (discourse communities) may be made up of the following:

family (parents)

friends from high school

friends in an internet chat room

We know from experience, that "to enter the conversation" in any of these communities, we need to abide by certain rules or abide by what I will now call conventions. These may take the form of the way we use words, or create sentences, and so on.
To the point, in order for our message to be accepted by any given audience, we need to speak or write according to the conventions or code--we know these rules from inference based on our observations how people communicate in these groups.

So, at home, a student may speak to his or her parents in Spanish or Korean.

But with friends, it may be with Slang: What's up dawg? Hey foo!

II. The Academic Community as Audience

Knowing your audience will shape the way you write your essay. The audience for this essay and most college essays is an academic audience---an academic community.

If you don't follow the rules or what I will now call stylistic conventions-then what you have written will not be well received or perhaps not even accepted. "Entering the conversation" in an academic community requires you to know the "code" or set of stylistic conventions of the academic community.

In college, there are 3 academic communities that have different conventions governing the way scholars communicate with each other.

Those 3 academic communities are as follows:

The humanities (like English and Art History)

The social sciences (like political science or sociology)

The physical sciences (like biology)

III. The Rules or Conventions for Writing Papers in Each Academic Community

Humanites: Modern Language Association (MLA style)

The Social Sciences: American Psychological Association (APA style)

The physical sciences: (These vary)

Fortunately for college students, many of the conventions of the MLA, APA, or Chicago are in stylistic handbooks or you can find information on websites, such as purdueowl.com

IV. Resource for Conforming to MLA Format Guidelines

The college has provided a free Citation & Style Guide for all students. Please visit the following link:

http://libguides.lamission.edu/Citations-Workshop

This resource contains:

MLA 8th Edition
properly formatting an essay in MLA format
how to integrate sources following MLA citation guidelines
steps to developing a Works Cited page
tutorial videos, such as on plagiarism

Important Note:

Submitting a paper to an English instructor in a different format (other than MLA) would signal several ideas:

You don't know there are separate rules or conventions for communicating in the Humanities
You know the MLA conventions but are careless
You know where the rules are but don't understand how to apply them

Ultimately, it is your responsibility to learn, apply, and follow the guidelines of the required academic format. For the purpose of this class, it is MLA format.