Professor Carney's Typing Guide

Pat Jones
English 1010
Professor Carney
October 13, 2003

Generic Typing Guidelines

     All four margins (top, bottom, left, and right) should be as close to one inch wide as practical. The right margin should be "ragged." It will be easier to read than a "justified" or flush margin. Use 12-point Courier. Double-space everything (even long quotations and bibliographies). One page of double-spaced text normally yields 24-28 typed lines.
     Do not underline or place your own title in quotation marks.
     Indent (tab) the first line of each paragraph half an inch (usually five spaces). Do not skip extra lines between paragraphs.
     Type one blank space after each comma, and one or two spaces after periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
     Never use all capitals. Underline or italicize for emphasis.
     Use one hyphen to join those hard-to-punctuate compound words. Form a dash by using two hyphens and no spaces--like this. And please learn the difference, or you'll look very silly.
     Don't add extra spaces in "quotation marks" (or parentheses).
     Except for the first page, which has a special format, type your last name and the page number in each top right corner. Note that this information will fall inside your top margin, roughly 1/2 inch from the top of the page.
     Staple your essay in the top left corner only.
     Use a binder only if instructed you to do so.

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     When you write a research paper or an essay for a course in literature, you must document all your ideas, whether you quote your sources directly or summarize their ideas in your own words. Most English and composition instructors ask their students to use the system of parenthetical citation developed by the Modern Language Association, usually called the MLA Style. According to one authority, the crucial features of this system are the almost total absence of endnotes and the presence of parenthetical documentation immediately following every idea borrowed from a source (Miller 69). As Gibaldi and Achtert put it, "you must document everything you borrow" (136).
     In the previous paragraph, we paraphrased one source's ideas and quoted another's. In each case, however, we were obliged to identify our source and specify the relevant page umbers; each citation refers to a more complete listing found at the end of the paper. Notice too that we named our sources inside the parenthetical citation only when they would not otherwise have been clear from context. Except for very brief references, it is actually preferable to name your sources in the text itself. Now examine the following extended quotation, which we have taken from Gibaldi and Achtert:

If you wish to use a quotation of more than four typed lines, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting ten spaces [one inch] from the left margin, and typing it double-spaced, without adding quotation marks. (49)

Notice (as explained above) that we have skipped no additional spaces before or after the extended quotation. If you learned a different rule in high school, no doubt you were following a different system.
     Occasionally, you may need to cite an unsigned article; in such a case, identify the article's title in the parentheses ("MLA" 22). You should also be aware that many on-line sources have no page numbers; in such a case, parentheses may be unnecessary.

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Works Cited

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December 1998. <http://www.aclu.org/library/pbp16.html>.

Gibaldi, Joseph, and Walter S. Achtert. MLA Handbook for Writers of

Research Papers. 2nd ed. New York: MLA, 1984.

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8 Nov. 1999.

Layng, Anthony. "Why Don't We Act Like the Opposite Sex?" USA Today

Magazine January 1993. Rpt. as "Evolution Explains Traditional

Gender Roles." Male/Female Roles. Ed. Jonathan S. Petrikin. San

Diego: Greenhaven, 1995. 17-23.

Miller, Robert K. The Informed Argument: A Multidisciplinary Reader

and Guide. 3rd ed. Fort Worth: HBJ, 1992.

"The MLA System." The Encyclopedia of Trivia. Ephraim: Nonsense

Publishers, 1999.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Cask of Amontillado." Tales of Revenge. Ed.

Neville S. Bloom. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.

12-15.

---. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing.

Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen G. Mandell. 2nd ed. Forth

Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1994. 482-5.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. James

Rieger. Chicago: U of C Press, 1974.

Williams, Jay. "Censorship on the Internet." E-mail to the author.

10 Oct. 1998.