style.mla.org

The MLA Style Center hosts a dedicated Teaching Resources section that covers digital and AI literacy, literature research methods, and reflective essays on teaching. The site is the authorized companion to the MLA Handbook and is free to browse; the MLA Handbook Plus digital edition is described on the site as subscription-based. If you teach writing, literature, or research skills and want ready-made discussion prompts, assignment ideas, or pedagogical models, the resources below are the most directly useful starting points.

Digital and AI literacy

Student Guide to AI Literacy

This is the site's main entry point for teaching students how to work with generative AI. It is aimed at students rather than instructors, which makes it usable as assigned reading. The site also invites instructors to share how they use the companion MLA Guide to Digital Literacy in their classrooms, so the Teaching Resources section functions partly as a place where teaching approaches are collected and exchanged.

Building Students' Skills with the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy

A Teaching Resources post that describes concrete strategies for developing students' digital literacy skills. Use it if you want a model for structuring a unit around evaluating sources, understanding how information circulates online, or introducing students to research as a critical practice rather than a search-and-cite exercise.

Literature research and the MLA International Bibliography

Two Teaching Resources posts focus on teaching research with the MLA International Bibliography:

• Strategies for Teaching World Literature Research with the MLA International Bibliography — approaches for getting students to use the bibliography as a research tool in world literature courses.
• Exploratory Research in the MLA International Bibliography: "News Reporting" and Contemporary Society — a model for exploratory, question-driven research rather than thesis-first searching.

These are useful when students need to move beyond general web searching and learn how a discipline-specific database is organized.

Thematic and reflective teaching essays

The Teaching Resources section also collects essays on teaching literature in specific contexts, which work well as readings for graduate seminars, teaching practicums, or curriculum discussions:

Practical teaching support

Beyond the thematic essays, the site offers tools you can hand directly to students:

• Formatting Your Research Project — a free sample chapter from MLA Handbook Plus covering how to set up a project in MLA format.
• Interactive Practice Template — for practicing works-cited entries.
• Sample Essays: Writing with MLA Style — annotated student essays.
• Works Cited: A Quick Guide and Using MLA Format — quick reference pages.
• Ask the MLA — short answers to specific citation and formatting questions, such as how to format a quotation of song lyrics (the same way you would format a quotation of poetry) or how to cite a quotation contained within a quotation.
• Advice from the Editors — posts on language and usage questions, including commonly confused word pairs like flaunt/flout and compliment/complement.

How to choose

If your goal is to introduce AI or digital literacy, start with the Student Guide to AI Literacy and the digital literacy teaching post. If your goal is to strengthen research skills in a literature course, use the two MLA International Bibliography posts. If you want course readings or discussion material on the purpose of literary study, the thematic essays are the better fit. For day-to-day citation and formatting questions from students, point them to the Quick Guide, the Practice Template, and Ask the MLA rather than the Teaching Resources section.

MLA does not require a separate title page for most student papers. Instead, you put your name, instructor, course, and date in the upper left of the first page, center the title below that, and begin the text directly underneath. Page margins, font, spacing, and page numbers follow a small set of consistent rules. The MLA Style Center provides a free sample chapter and an interactive practice template to check your work.

Basic Page Setup

Set these before you type any text, so the whole document inherits them:

The header with your last name and the page number sits in the top right of every page, including the first. In most word processors this means inserting a page number into the header and typing your surname before it.

The First-Page Heading and Title

The heading block goes in the upper left of page 1, double-spaced, on four separate lines:

Jordan Ellis
Professor Nakamura
English 210
14 March 2025

Then center the title on the next line. Use standard title capitalization (capitalize major words), do not bold, italicize, underline, or enlarge it, and do not add a period at the end. Leave one double-spaced line between the title and the first paragraph.

If your instructor asks for a separate title page, follow that instruction instead — instructor requirements override the default.

Body Text, Headings, and Quotations

• Paragraphs: indent the first line 0.5 inch; do not add extra blank lines between paragraphs.
• Section headings: MLA permits numbered or unnumbered headings if your instructor wants them. Keep them flush left, in title case, and do not add a period.
• Short quotations (prose under four lines): run them into your sentence inside double quotation marks, with the parenthetical citation before the period.
• Long quotations (prose over four lines): start on a new line, indent the whole block 0.5 inch from the left margin, double-space it, omit quotation marks, and place the period before the parenthetical citation.
• Poetry: quotations of three lines or fewer go in the text with line breaks marked by a slash; longer passages are set as a block, preserving the line breaks. Song lyrics follow the same convention as poetry.

Works Cited Page

Begin it on a new page, center the words Works Cited (no bold, no italics), and keep the double spacing and 1-inch margins. Entries are alphabetized by the author's last name or, when there is no author, by the first word of the title. Each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line flush left, subsequent lines indented 0.5 inch.

Checking Your Format

The MLA Style Center offers a free sample chapter on formatting your research project through MLA Handbook Plus, plus an interactive practice template for building Works Cited entries. The Ask the MLA section answers specific questions — for example, how to format a quotation of song lyrics, or whether you need to cite a quotation contained within another quotation. Use these when a case is not covered above.

Common Sticking Points

• Extra space between paragraphs: caused by paragraph spacing settings, not line spacing. Set "space after" to 0.
• Page number in the wrong place: it belongs in the header, right-aligned, not typed into the body text.
• Title styled like a heading: MLA titles are plain centered text, not bold or larger.
• Missing hanging indent: apply it to the Works Cited entries only, not to body paragraphs.
• Instructor instructions differ: when your assignment sheet conflicts with the general format, follow the assignment sheet.

The MLA Style Center (style.mla.org) is the only authorized website on MLA style, published by the Modern Language Association. It provides free resources on research, writing, and documentation, and it is the place to go when you need an official answer about MLA format rather than a third-party summary. It suits students formatting a paper, teachers building citation or digital-literacy lessons, and researchers who want guidance straight from the source.

What you can find on the site

The homepage organizes its material into a few recurring areas:

• Formatting Your Research Project — guidance for setting up a project in MLA format. The site points to a free sample chapter on MLA Handbook Plus, described as "the only authorized subscription-based digital" resource.
• Works Cited: A Quick Guide and Using MLA Format — quick-reference pages under the site's Quick Links.
• Interactive Practice Template — a hands-on tool for working through citation elements.
• Sample Essays: Writing with MLA Style — examples of student writing in MLA style.
• MLA Style Videos — short instructional videos.
• Ask the MLA — a Q&A section answering specific citation questions, such as how to format a quotation of song lyrics (the same way you would format a quotation of poetry) or whether you need to cite a quotation contained in a quotation.
• Advice from the Editors — short posts on language and usage, including commonly confused words like flaunt vs. flout, compliment vs. complement, and whose vs. who's.
• Teaching Resources — lesson-oriented material, including posts on using the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy, teaching world literature research with the MLA International Bibliography, and the MLA Democracy Project essays on teaching democracy and literature.

Free resources vs. the MLA Handbook

The site describes itself as offering free resources on research, writing, and documentation, and most of what is listed above — the quick guides, Ask the MLA posts, editor advice, and teaching posts — is available directly on the site. The full MLA Handbook is a separate product: the site links to the e-book (Apple, Kindle, Nook) and a print copy, and to MLA Handbook Plus, which it calls the only authorized subscription-based digital version. If you need the complete, authoritative rules rather than a quick answer, that is where the site directs you. The site itself does not state prices for these products, so check the linked storefronts for current cost.

Who it is for

• Students: use the formatting guidance, Works Cited quick guide, practice template, and sample essays to set up and cite a paper correctly.
• Teachers: use the Teaching Resources section for classroom strategies, including digital literacy and research skills with the MLA International Bibliography.
• Researchers and writers: use Ask the MLA and Advice from the Editors to resolve specific citation or usage questions.

How to use it

1. Start with the Quick Links if you have a specific task — for example, Formatting Your Research Project or Works Cited: A Quick Guide.
2. If your question is narrow ("How do I cite X?"), search or browse Ask the MLA, which collects answers to individual citation questions.
3. If your question is about word choice or grammar, check Advice from the Editors.
4. If you are teaching, browse Teaching Resources for lesson ideas and discussion prompts.
5. For the complete rules, follow the site's links to the MLA Handbook or MLA Handbook Plus.

Because the site is the association's own, answers here carry more weight than a random style blog — when a citation question matters, this is the reference to check first.

MLA treats a quotation of song lyrics the same way it treats a quotation of poetry: keep the line breaks of the original, and cite by line number rather than page number when the lines are numbered. For a quotation inside another quotation, keep the inner quotation in double quotation marks, convert the surrounding quotation to single quotation marks, and cite the source you actually consulted. Both rules come from the MLA Style Center's "Ask the MLA" series, which is the site's running Q&A on specific citation problems.

Quoting song lyrics: format them as poetry

The Style Center's answer is direct: "Format a quotation of song lyrics the same way you would format a quotation of poetry." That single instruction carries several consequences.

Short quotations (three lines or fewer)

Run the lines into your prose, but mark the line breaks with a forward slash surrounded by spaces ( / ). Keep the capitalization of the original.

In "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Dylan warns the senators and congressmen that "the line it is drawn / the curse it is cast."

Long quotations (more than three lines)

Set the quotation off as a block, indented half an inch from the left margin, and reproduce the line breaks exactly as they appear in the song. Do not add quotation marks around a block quotation. If the song is divided into stanzas, preserve the stanza break as well.

Citing the lines

Because songs are usually divided into numbered lines in a published or liner-note version, MLA prefers line numbers over page numbers. Use the abbreviation "lines" or "ll." in the first citation, then bare numbers afterward.

• One line: (lines 4-5)
• Later reference: (12)

If the version you are using has no line numbers, cite the page or timestamp instead, and say so in your text (for example, "at 1:42 in the recording").

Works Cited entry

A song is cited by performer (or composer, depending on what you are discussing), title, album, publisher, and year. The container is the album or the recording platform, not the song itself.

Dylan, Bob. "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The Times They Are A-Changin', Columbia Records, 1964.

If you listened on a streaming service, name the service as the container and give the URL or app. If you are analyzing the lyrics as a written text, cite the sheet music or lyric sheet instead, and treat the songwriter as author.

Quotations within quotations: the nesting rule

The Style Center's second relevant answer explains how to cite "a quotation contained in a quotation." The mechanics are simple, but the citation decision is where students usually go wrong.

The punctuation

• The inner quotation keeps double quotation marks.
• The outer quotation switches to single quotation marks.

The reviewer noted that the poet "called the collection 'a failed elegy' before abandoning it."

If the inner quotation itself contains a quotation, alternate back to double marks — but at that depth, consider paraphrasing instead, since the punctuation becomes hard to read.

The citation

Cite the source you actually read, not the original speaker. If you found the poet's phrase quoted in a review, your parenthetical and Works Cited entry point to the review. You may name the original speaker in your sentence for clarity.

The poet called the collection "a failed elegy" (qtd. in Marsh 22).

Use the abbreviation "qtd. in" ("quoted in") when the person you are quoting is not the author of the source you consulted. The Works Cited entry is for Marsh's review, not for the poet's unpublished remark.

When to track down the original

MLA's guidance is practical rather than absolute: if the original source is available and central to your argument, find it and cite it directly. Use "qtd. in" when the original is unavailable, when you are quoting a remark reported secondhand, or when the quotation is incidental to your point.

Where these rules live on the Style Center

The site organizes this material in a few places worth knowing:

The Handbook itself sits behind MLA Handbook Plus, described on the site as "the only authorized subscription-based digital" version. The Ask the MLA posts and the quick guides are free to read; the complete Handbook is not.

Common sticking points

• Collapsing the line breaks. If you quote lyrics as running prose, the slashes are not optional — they are what tells the reader where the lines fall.
• Citing the songwriter when you read a review. Match the citation to the source in your hands.
• Mixing up the nesting. Outer single, inner double. Reversing this is the most frequent error in nested quotations.
• Forgetting "qtd. in." Without it, your reader will look for the original speaker in your Works Cited and not find them.
• Assuming a page number exists. Songs rarely have stable pagination; line numbers or timestamps are the honest choice.

The MLA Style Center (style.mla.org) gathers the core MLA formatting tools in one place: the Works Cited: A Quick Guide, Sample Essays: Writing with MLA Style, and the Interactive Practice Template, plus MLA Style Videos and the Ask the MLA Q&A section. All of these are listed under Quick Links on the site's home page, so you can reach them without hunting through the Handbook. The one exception is the full "Formatting Your Research Project" chapter, which the site points to on MLA Handbook Plus, described as "the only authorized subscription-based digital" resource.

Quick Links: the fastest route to each tool

The home page's Quick Links block is the practical starting point. It links directly to:

• Works Cited: A Quick Guide — for building and checking citation entries.
• Sample Essays: Writing with MLA Style — for seeing MLA format applied to a full paper.
• Interactive Practice Template — for assembling citation elements in the correct order.
• Using MLA Format — for general formatting guidance.
• MLA Style Videos — for visual walkthroughs.
• Ask the MLA — for specific questions answered by the editors.
• MLA Handbook, 9th Edition and MLA Handbook Plus — for the authoritative text.

Works Cited: A Quick Guide

Use this when you need to construct or verify an entry in the list of works cited. It is the site's condensed citation reference, distinct from the full Handbook chapter. If your question is about how a specific source type is documented, this guide is the first stop; if it doesn't resolve the detail, the Ask the MLA posts often cover edge cases.

Sample Essays: Writing with MLA Style

This section provides complete student essays formatted in MLA style. It is the best resource for seeing how the pieces fit together in practice — margins, heading, in-text citations, and the works-cited list as a whole — rather than as isolated rules.

Interactive Practice Template

The template lets you work through citation elements interactively instead of only reading rules. It suits learners who want to practice assembling an entry and check their understanding, and it pairs naturally with the Quick Guide.

Formatting Your Research Project

For setting up the document itself, the site directs readers to a free sample chapter on MLA Handbook Plus. Note the site's own description: MLA Handbook Plus is "the only authorized subscription-based digital" resource. The Style Center does not present this chapter as a standalone free download on the main site; it is reached through Handbook Plus.

Ask the MLA and Advice from the Editors

Two Q&A-style sections handle questions the guides don't:

• Ask the MLA — reader questions with editor answers. Examples on the site include how to format a quotation of song lyrics (formatted like a quotation of poetry) and whether you need to cite a quotation contained in a quotation.
• Advice from the Editors — shorter usage and language posts, such as the difference between flaunt and flout, compliment vs. complement, and whose vs. who's.

Which resource to use

Practical notes

• The Quick Links block on the home page is the single entry point for most of these tools, so bookmark it rather than individual pages.
• The site also maintains Teaching Resources and a Student Guide to AI Literacy, which are aimed at instruction rather than citation mechanics.
• The site describes itself as "the only authorized Web site on MLA style," so treat its guidance as the reference point when other sources conflict.