Thirteen lucky format steps
with thanks to Prof. Karen Ford, English Dept.

• Your essay should be typed with one-inch margins all around.
• Do not use a title page (see next item for further instructions).
• Your name, the date, and the course title should be typed, single-spaced, on the first page in the upper right-hand corner. Skip two lines, and center your title (the title of your paper, not the title of the book you're writing about). Do not indent the first paragraph, but indent the beginning of each subsequent paragraph without skipping any extra lines.
• Double space the entire paper; do not use 1 ½ spacing to save room; do not give extra spaces between paragraphs to take up more room. Do not justify the right margin.
• Be sure your pages are numbered, top right-hand corner. If your wordprocessing program makes it easy, include your name with each page number.
• Always keep a copy of your paper for yourself. Don't use erasable or onion-skin paper for the original.
• Incorporate words or phrases (even block quotations; see below) into your own prose.
• Always introduce quotations with a sentence that explains why you're quoting, and follow all qauotations with analysis. Don't expect readers to puzzle out the significance of your quotation. Further, quotations cannont do the work of your own prose: they illustrate or prove a point; they don't make the point for you.
• Avoid beginning paragraphs or introducing quotations with phrases that have no real content, such as "In line four . . . ." Instead, say what it is that line four does: "The opening lines of the poem allude to Eliot's The Waste Land." Or, rather than "in the next section," "The novel concludes with a violent reminder of . . . ."
• For poetry, enclose titles of individual poems in double quotation marks and cite line numbers ("Nutting," 12); for drama, italicize or underline the play's title and cite act, scene, and line numbers (Tempest, 4.1.148-50); for prose, italicize or underline the book's title and cite page numbers (God of Small Things, 23). Notice that numbers are cited without an accompanying "page," "pp," "lines," or other identifier: your audience will know the quoted material's format. If your paper concerns one text, you needn't repeat that title each time you cite your reference--just use the appropriate poetic line or prose page numbers. Most important, be consistent in the reference style you choose.
• Periods and commas go inside quotation marks; semi-colons and dashes go outside. If you need to change a word within a quotation in order to make it fit your sentence grammatically, use square brackets, not parentheses, around the changed word.
• Block quotations are used when quoting several lines (but no more than about seven). Indent ten spaces from the left and ten from the right. This indentation replaces quotation marks; do not use quotation marks with block quotations (unless you are quoting something, like dialogue, already in quotation marks in the text).
• When quoting in block quotation style, the page number appears after the final punctuation.

Back to top of page | Back to Bishop Home Page | Back to HC 103 syllabus |
Back to HC 101 syllabus This page created by Louise M. Bishop | Last updated 20 March 2000