Nothing makes MLA formatting click like seeing a complete paper laid out correctly. This page walks you through an annotated sample paper — from the first-page heading block to the final Works Cited entry — so you can compare your own paper against a working model and catch any formatting issues before you submit.
Every callout below highlights a specific MLA rule. If you want the full explanation behind a rule, follow the links to the relevant guide pages.
What This Sample Paper Demonstrates
The sample paper below is a short literary analysis essay — the most common type of assignment formatted in MLA. It covers:
- First-page heading block and title formatting
- Running header with last name and page number
- Body text with proper margins, spacing, and indentation
- Parenthetical and signal-phrase in-text citations
- A block quotation (4+ lines of prose)
- A properly formatted Works Cited page
The essay is fictional, but every formatting detail follows MLA 9th edition rules exactly.
Annotated First Page
Here's what the first page of a properly formatted MLA paper looks like:
Elena Vasquez
Professor Thompson
English 201
15 March 2026
The Evolution of the Unreliable Narrator in Contemporary Fiction The unreliable narrator has been a fixture of literary fiction since at least the nineteenth century, but its role has shifted dramatically in contemporary novels. Where earlier unreliable narrators — like those in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw or Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier — invited readers to decode a hidden truth beneath the surface, contemporary novelists increasingly use unreliability as a structural principle rather than a puzzle to be solved. Morrison, Ishiguro, and Ferrante all deploy narrators whose unreliability is the point, not the problem.
Key Formatting Details
| Element | Rule |
|---|---|
| Heading block | Your name, instructor, course, date — each on its own line, left-aligned, double-spaced |
| Date format | Day Month Year (15 March 2026), not Month/Day/Year |
| Title | Centered, title case, same font and size as body text — not bold, not underlined, not larger |
| First-line indent | 0.5 inches (1.27 cm) for every body paragraph |
| Running header | Last name + page number in the upper-right corner of every page, including page 1 |
| Margins | 1 inch on all sides |
| Font | 12 pt legible font (e.g., Times New Roman) used consistently throughout |
| Spacing | Double-spaced everywhere — no extra gaps between heading, title, and body |
For the full explanation of first-page setup, see MLA Format Paper.
Annotated Body Pages
The body of the paper continues on subsequent pages with the same formatting — double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 0.5-inch first-line indent, and the running header continuing in the upper right.
Here's a representative body paragraph showing both citation styles:
Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day illustrates this shift clearly. Stevens, the butler-narrator, recounts his decades of service with a measured formality that gradually reveals what he cannot say directly — that he sacrificed his personal life, and perhaps his moral integrity, in service to a man who sympathized with fascism. As Cynthia Wong observes, "Stevens's reliability as a narrator of facts makes his emotional unreliability all the more devastating" (87). The reader trusts his account of events while recognizing that his interpretation of those events is profoundly compromised (Wong 90).
In-Text Citation Callouts
Signal-phrase citation: The author's name is woven into the sentence ("As Cynthia Wong observes"), and only the page number appears in parentheses — (87).
Parenthetical citation: The author's last name and the page number both appear inside the parentheses — (Wong 90). The period comes after the closing parenthesis.
No comma between the author's name and the page number. No "p." before the page number. These are the two most common mistakes in MLA in-text citations.
For the full guide, see MLA In-Text Citations.
Annotated Block Quotation
When a prose quotation runs to four or more lines in your paper, format it as a block quote — indented 0.5 inches from the left margin, double-spaced, with no quotation marks. The parenthetical citation goes after the final period.
Morrison's treatment of memory in Beloved demonstrates how the unreliable narrator can serve a structural purpose. Sethe does not simply misremember — she re-creates the past in fragments that the reader must piece together:
She was crawling already when I got to 124. One week after I got to Cincinnati and there she was, crawling already. I never fixed on her a lasting look. I just saw her crawling. She had good hands, she could hold things, but she couldn't walk. When I put her down on the grass and turned my back, she was crawling after me so fast she dirtied her knees. One day she just up and walked. (Morrison 102)
The passage reads as memory in real time — associative, circling, avoiding the center. Morrison lets the narrative structure do what the character cannot bring herself to do directly.
Block Quote Formatting Rules
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| When to use | Prose quotations of 4+ lines in your paper |
| Indentation | Indent the entire block 0.5 inches from the left margin |
| Quotation marks | None — the indentation signals that it's a quote |
| Spacing | Double-spaced, same as the rest of the paper |
| Citation placement | Parenthetical citation after the final period of the quote |
| Introducing the quote | End your lead-in sentence with a colon if it's a complete clause |
For more on quoting, including verse and drama, see How to Use Block Quotes in MLA Format.
Annotated Works Cited Page
The Works Cited page starts on a new page after the body of the paper. The running header continues, and the formatting rules are specific:
Works Cited Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier. 1915. Penguin Books, 2002.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. Faber and Faber, 1989.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 1898. Dover Publications, 1991.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage Books, 2004.
Wong, Cynthia F. Kazuo Ishiguro. 2nd ed., Northcote House, 2005.
Works Cited Formatting Rules
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Title | "Works Cited" — centered, same font, not bold or underlined |
| Alphabetical order | Entries sorted by the first element (usually author's last name) |
| Hanging indent | First line flush left; subsequent lines indented 0.5 inches |
| Spacing | Double-spaced within and between entries — no extra blank lines |
| Running header | Continues from the body — last name + page number |
| New page | Always starts on its own page |
Notice the hanging indent — the first line of each entry begins at the left margin, and any overflow lines are indented. This makes the list easy to scan because the author's name stands out visually.
For the full guide, see MLA Works Cited Page.
Pre-Submission Checklist
Before you turn in your paper, run through this checklist. Each item corresponds to a common deduction on grading rubrics:
Page Layout
- 1-inch margins on all four sides
- 12 pt legible font (same font throughout)
- Double-spaced everywhere — no extra gaps
- 0.5-inch first-line indent for body paragraphs
First Page
- Heading block: name, instructor, course, date — left-aligned, double-spaced
- Date in day-month-year format (15 March 2026)
- Title centered, title case, same font and size as body text
- No bold, underline, or increased font size on the title
Running Header
- Last name + page number in the upper-right corner of every page
- Starts on page 1 and continues through the Works Cited page
In-Text Citations
- Every paraphrase and quotation has a citation
- Parenthetical citations: author + page number, no comma, no "p."
- Period after the parenthetical for short quotations
- Block quotes indented 0.5 inches, no quotation marks, citation after the final period
- Every in-text citation has a matching Works Cited entry
Works Cited Page
- Starts on a new page
- Title "Works Cited" centered — not bold, not underlined
- Entries alphabetized by first element
- Hanging indent on every entry
- Double-spaced within and between entries
- Every Works Cited entry has at least one in-text citation pointing to it
- No period after URLs
What's Next
Now that you've seen a complete MLA paper in action, explore the details behind each formatting requirement:
- MLA Format Paper — the full guide to page layout and first-page setup
- MLA In-Text Citations — everything you need to know about citing sources in the body of your paper
- MLA Works Cited Page — how to build and format every entry on your Works Cited page
- MLA Header & Page Numbers — step-by-step instructions for setting up the running header in Word and Google Docs
If you want to skip the manual formatting entirely, Archivero can generate properly formatted MLA citations for every source in your library — so you can focus on the writing itself.
