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.
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Last updated 20 March 2000