Bài luận định dạng MLA

What is this MLA format paper template?

This is a free LaTeX template for a complete paper in MLA format, following the MLA Handbook, 9th edition. It gives you every element an MLA essay is marked on: the running header with your last name and page number, the four-line MLA heading, the centred plain-text title, double-spaced 12-point Times-style text with one-inch margins and half-inch paragraph indents, a block quotation, an in-text citation in the Author page form, and a Works Cited page on its own sheet with hanging indents. A short two-paragraph sample essay shows each rule in use, so you can compare your own draft against the preview above.

The document class is plain article; there is no MLA class to install. The layout comes from four standard packages, geometry, newtxtext, setspace and fancyhdr, plus a small blockquote environment and an \entry command defined in the preamble. It compiles with pdfLaTeX on any TeX distribution and in Overleaf without changes.

MLA heading and header

MLA uses two things that are easy to confuse. The MLA header is the running head: your last name, a space and the page number, in the top right corner of every page, half an inch below the top edge and flush with the right margin. The MLA heading is the block of four lines at the top left of the first page only, in this order:

1. Your full name
2. Your instructor's name (for example Professor Elena Marquez)
3. The course name or number (English 102)
4. The date, written day month year with no commas (19 October 2026)

Each line of the heading is double spaced like the rest of the paper; there is no blank line between the lines, between the heading and the title, or between the title and the first paragraph. In the template the header is produced by fancyhdr:

\usepackage[margin=1in,headheight=15pt,headsep=21pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\newcommand{\lastname}{Smith}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[R]{\lastname\ \thepage}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}

headheight plus headsep add up to half an inch, so the header sits half an inch below the top edge of the page, as MLA wants, and headrulewidth set to zero removes the line fancyhdr would otherwise draw. The heading is four \noindent paragraphs after \begin{document}:

\noindent\studentname\par
\noindent\instructor\par
\noindent\course\par
\noindent\duedate\par

The \noindent matters: under \raggedright a \\ line break ends the paragraph, so without it lines two to four would pick up the half-inch first-line indent.

MLA format example

Here is what the first page of the template looks like once compiled, element by element. In the top right corner, half an inch from the top, sits the header Smith 1. One inch from the top and the left edge the heading begins, four double-spaced lines flush left: Jordan Smith, then Professor Elena Marquez, then English 102, then 19 October 2026. On the next line, centred, the title Reading the City: Memory and Place in Contemporary Fiction in ordinary 12-point type, with no bold, underlining or quotation marks. The first paragraph starts on the line after the title, indented half an inch, and the text runs double spaced with a ragged right edge to the one-inch margins.

The second paragraph ends with a colon and a block quotation indented half an inch from the left margin, with no quotation marks and the citation (Okafor 118) after the closing period. The sentence that continues the paragraph after the quote returns to the left margin without a new indent. The first paragraph contains a short quotation inside quotation marks followed by the in-text citation (Alvarez 47) before the sentence's period. Page 2 carries the header Smith 2, the title Works Cited centred, and two entries with hanging indents, alphabetised by the authors' surnames.

In the source, the information that fills the heading and title is collected in six commands so you only edit the top of the file:

\newcommand{\studentname}{Jordan Smith}
\newcommand{\lastname}{Smith}          % printed in the running header
\newcommand{\instructor}{Professor Elena Marquez}
\newcommand{\course}{English 102}
\newcommand{\duedate}{19 October 2026}  % MLA date order: day month year
\newcommand{\papertitle}{Reading the City: Memory and Place in Contemporary Fiction}

MLA paper format rules

Use this checklist against your own paper. The left column is the rule from the handbook; the right column is the line in the template that handles it.

Do you need an MLA title page?

Usually not. The MLA Handbook does not call for a separate title page on a student paper: the four-line heading and the centred title on page 1 do that job, and page 1 is the first page of text. You need a title page only when your instructor asks for one, or occasionally for a group project where all the authors' names would not fit in the heading.

If you do need one, the template has the layout ready in a commented block directly after \begin{document}. Remove the % signs, and delete the four heading lines that follow it:

\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{center}
  \vspace*{1.5in}
  \course\\
  \instructor\\
  \duedate
  \vfill
  \papertitle
  \vfill
  \studentname
  \vspace*{1.5in}
\end{center}
\newpage
\setcounter{page}{1}      % drop this line if the title page should count as page 1

This puts the course information in the upper third of the page, the title in the middle and your name near the bottom, all centred and double spaced, with no header on the title page itself. The last line restarts the numbering so the first page of text is Smith 1; delete it if your instructor counts the title page.

MLA in-text citations and block quotes

MLA cites sources in the text with the author's last name and the page number in parentheses, with no comma and no "p.": (Alvarez 47). The citation goes before the period of the sentence it supports. If the author is named in the sentence, give only the page: Alvarez describes the city as a palimpsest (47). Two authors are joined with "and"; three or more take "et al."; a source with no author is cited by a shortened title in the same style it has on the Works Cited page. Every in-text citation must match the first word of an entry on the Works Cited page.

A quotation that would run more than four lines of prose (or three of verse) becomes a block quote. Introduce it with a colon or a full sentence, indent the whole block half an inch, keep the double spacing, leave out the quotation marks, and place the citation after the final period. The template provides a small environment for this:

\newenvironment{blockquote}
  {\par\setlength{\leftskip}{0.5in}\noindent\ignorespaces}
  {\par}

... argues that the genre's maps are unreliable on purpose:
\begin{blockquote}
The novel does not want its reader to find the street. It wants the reader to
feel the street slip ... where the story lives. (Okafor 118)
\end{blockquote}
\noindent Okafor's point explains why ...

Setting \leftskip inside the environment indents every line of the quotation by half an inch and the closing \par makes sure the setting applies before the group ends. Unlike the built-in quote environment it adds no vertical space above or below, so the double spacing stays uniform. If the sentence after the quotation continues the same paragraph, start it with \noindent; if it begins a new paragraph, leave a blank line and let the normal indent apply.

Section-by-section walkthrough

Preamble: page, font, spacing and header

\documentclass[12pt,letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in,headheight=15pt,headsep=21pt]{geometry}
\usepackage{newtxtext}      % Times-like 12 pt text font
\usepackage{setspace}       % double spacing
\usepackage{fancyhdr}       % running header
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}

\doublespacing
\raggedright               % MLA: do not justify the right margin
\hyphenpenalty=10000       % MLA: turn automatic hyphenation off
\frenchspacing
\setlength{\parindent}{0.5in}
\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}

The order of the last lines is deliberate: \raggedright resets \parindent to zero, so the half-inch indent is set after it. newtxtext is the maintained Times clone; setspace provides \doublespacing, which scales the line spacing for a 12-point font the same way a word processor does. hyperref is there only so that URLs in Works Cited entries can break after a slash or period; hidelinks keeps the PDF free of coloured link boxes.

The heading, title and body

After \begin{document} come the optional title page block (commented out), the four heading lines, the centred title and the essay. Paragraphs are separated by a blank line, as usual in LaTeX, and get their half-inch indent automatically. Short quotations go inside curly quotation marks “ ” with the citation before the period; long ones go in a blockquote. Titles of books, films and journals are set with \textit; titles of articles, chapters and poems go in quotation marks.

The Works Cited page

\newpage

{\centering Works Cited\par}

\entry{Alvarez, Marisol. \textit{The Cartographer's Daughter}. Harbor Lane Press, 2019.}

\entry{Okafor, Daniel. “Streets without Names: Memory and Mapping in the Postwar Novel.” \textit{Journal of Urban Fiction}, vol. 14, no.\ 2, 2021, pp. 113--31.}

\newpage starts the list on its own page while the page number continues. The title is plain text, centred with \centering inside a group so that no extra space is added. Each \entry is a paragraph with \hangindent=0.5in, which indents every line after the first; \noindent inside the command cancels the body's paragraph indent. Keep the entries in alphabetical order by the first word, ignoring A, An and The. The MLA works cited page template has eight more entry formats you can copy: edited books, translations, journal articles with a DOI, newspaper articles, films and web pages.

How to customize the template

• Your details. Edit the six \newcommand lines at the top: name, last name (for the header), instructor, course, date and title. Nothing else in the file needs to change for a new paper.
• Section headings. MLA permits optional headings in longer papers. Keep them in the body font and flush left, for example \noindent\textbf{1. Background}\par, rather than using \section, which would enlarge them and add space.
• Automated citations. For a long paper, keep your sources in a .bib file and load \usepackage[style=mla,backend=biber]{biblatex}; cite with \autocite[47]{alvarez2019} and replace the manual entries with \printbibliography[title={Works Cited}]. Compile with latexmk so biber runs.
• Font. newtxtext gives the Times New Roman look. If your instructor allows another legible font, swap the package, for example \usepackage{tgpagella}; the rest of the layout is unaffected.
• Paper size. Outside North America change letterpaper to a4paper in the class options and in geometry. MLA specifies the margins, not the paper size.
• Endnotes. If you use notes, MLA places them on a page titled Notes before the Works Cited. Load endnotes, write \endnote{...} in the text and put \theendnotes after a \newpage with a centred "Notes" title.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

• Heading lines indented. If the instructor's name, course or date shifts right by half an inch, a \\ was used instead of the \noindent ... \par pattern. Under \raggedright a line break ends the paragraph and the next line gets the paragraph indent.
• Title in bold or larger type. Do not use \maketitle, \section* or \textbf for the title; MLA wants it in the body font. Likewise avoid the center environment, which adds vertical space; the template uses \centering inside braces.
• Extra space between paragraphs. Any \vspace, \bigskip or a parskip package breaks the uniform double spacing. Remove them; paragraphs are marked by indent only.
• Citation inside the block quote's period. For a block quote the citation follows the final period: ...the story lives. (Okafor 118). For a short quotation in running text it comes before the period: ...failed to fill" (Alvarez 47).
• Page number restarts after the title page. If you enabled the optional title page and the first text page still shows 2, make sure the \setcounter{page}{1} line is uncommented after the \newpage.
• Straight quotation marks. Typing "..." prints straight marks. Use the curly characters “ ” as the template does, or TeX's ``...''.
• Works Cited not on its own page. The \newpage before the title was deleted. Put it back; the list always starts a new page even if the last page of text is nearly empty.

How to compile the MLA paper

1. In Octree: click Open as template above. The paper opens with a live preview; fill in the heading commands, paste your essay, or ask the AI assistant to turn a source into an MLA 9 Works Cited entry.
2. In Overleaf: create a blank project, paste the source into main.tex and recompile. The default pdfLaTeX compiler is correct and every package used ships with a standard TeX Live install.
3. Locally: save as paper.tex and run:

   pdflatex paper.tex
   # or, with biblatex-mla:
   latexmk -pdf paper.tex

   One pdfLaTeX pass is enough for the manual Works Cited; biblatex needs the biber run that latexmk performs automatically.

Related templates

Frequently asked questions

What is the MLA heading?

The MLA heading is the four-line block at the top left of the first page: your full name, your instructor's name, the course name or number, and the date written day month year (19 October 2026). Each item sits on its own line, double spaced like the rest of the paper, with no blank line between them. The title follows on the next line, centred. The heading appears only on page 1; every page also carries the running header.

What is the difference between the MLA heading and the MLA header?

The heading is the four lines of information on the first page only. The header (running head) is your last name followed by a space and the page number, in the top right corner of every page, half an inch from the top edge: for example Smith 1, Smith 2. The template prints the header with fancyhdr and the heading with four \noindent lines after \begin{document}.

Does an MLA paper need a title page?

No. MLA 9 does not use a title page for a standard research paper or essay; the four-line heading and the centred title replace it. Some instructors and some group projects ask for one anyway. The template includes a commented-out title page block you can enable in that case: course, instructor and date in the upper third, the title in the middle, your name near the bottom, all centred and double spaced, with no header or page number on that page.

Should the MLA title be bold, underlined or in a larger font?

None of those. The title is centred on the line after the heading, in the same 12-point font as the body, in title case, with no bold, italics, underlining, quotation marks or full stop. Italicise only the parts that would be italic in running text, such as the title of a novel you are discussing. The template sets it with {\centering \papertitle\par}, which adds no vertical space above or below.

How do I format a block quote in MLA?

Use a block quotation for prose that runs more than four lines or verse of more than three lines. Introduce it with a colon or a complete sentence, indent the whole quotation half an inch from the left margin, keep it double spaced, omit the quotation marks, and put the parenthetical citation after the final period rather than before it. The template's blockquote environment does the indent; you write the citation as (Okafor 118) at the end.

What font and spacing does MLA 9 require?

A legible font in which regular and italic are clearly different, typically 12-point Times New Roman; double spacing throughout, including the heading, block quotes and the Works Cited page; one-inch margins on all sides; a half-inch first-line indent on every paragraph; left-aligned text with automatic hyphenation off; and one space after a period. The template sets all of these with newtxtext, setspace, geometry, \parindent, \raggedright, \hyphenpenalty and \frenchspacing.

How do I add the Works Cited page to my paper?

It is already in the template. After the last paragraph a \newpage starts the Works Cited page, which continues the page numbering, has the title Works Cited centred in plain text, and lists one \entry{...} per source in alphabetical order with a half-inch hanging indent. Replace the two sample entries with your own sources. For the full set of entry formats see the MLA works cited page template.