Standard Paper Formats

MLA format? What? It stands for Modern Language Association and it is the most commonly used format in liberal arts colleges. It is used to help create standards for formatting papers--in other words so that all your Humanities teachers want the papers to look the same way --same font, same style, same conventions, etc. There is also an APA format often used in science writing. There is also the Chicago Style manuel used in journalism and publishing. If you are totally fascinated by this, you can learn more about it by visiting here

If you need an online web site which spells out all the rules for you, use this one.

There is a sample of what a first page should look like in addition to a whole host of other useful information. See the section on the right called "General Academic Writing" for lots of how-tos.