St. Joseph School

Formatting Guidelines for grades 6-8

Throughout the world, institutions have adopted specific guidelines for formatting academic writing and citing references. One set of guidelines employed is the MLA (Modern Language Association), which is used in the area high schools. St. Joseph School has adopted the MLA guidelines to help you, the student, become familiar with this formatting before you enter high school. All final draft papers, in all content areas, will be expected to use this format. Papers not using this format will be marked down unless the teacher has indicated a different set of requirements.

General Rules for Final Drafts: (example)

1. 12 point font/ Times New Roman or Cambria

2. Double-space the entire document (including heading).

3. Indent at the start of each paragraph.

4. Place the heading on the LEFT hand side and include – writer’s name, teacher’s name, class, and date as seen on fig. 1 on backside of this paper.

5. Set 1-inch margins for entire document (top, bottom, left, right). You will need to reset your margins in Word as it is set for 1.25”.

6. If your paper has a title it should be centered and appear under the heading information.

7. Papers requiring research must have a Works Cited page and use in-text citations where appropriate.

8. Italicize names of books, magazines, journals, websites when referenced in the text.

In-Text Citation Rules: (your teacher will go over these as you practice using them)

1. Any reference you cite in your paper must appear on the Works Cited page.

2. Whichever phrase or word you use to signal the source in the paper must be the first word in the source entry on the Works Cited page.

3. Depending upon the source, there are a variety of ways to cite references within your paper. For an extensive list reference this website, or on the St. Joseph library website.

Works Cited Page Rules: (example)

1. Create a separate page with the title Works Cited centered at the top. (12 point font/Times New Roman or Cambria)

2. For each source listed, begin the first line at margin and indent all following lines. (See fig. 2)

3. Double-space the entire document.

4. Use italics for all books, magazines, journals, websites titles, titles of poems and articles are in “quotations”.

5. Note punctuation and follow EXACTLY as in samples on library website.

6. Organize list of sources alphabetically using the first word in each entry (typically this will be the author’s last name or the first important word in the title)

7. Follow guidelines for various types of sources.

8. Attach Works Cited page to the end of the final draft.

There are a variety of rules to follow when entering varying sources onto the Works Cited page. Luckily there are tools on the internet to help. One such link is http://www.bibme.org/. This site allows students to enter information from the source and formats it correctly. (One note is that students still need to create a Works Cited page following the above format – make sure the bibme sets up the page alphabetically etc…) Students are encouraged to use this resource. Our library website also has directions by grade explaining how to enter source information per your grade level.