The objective of English Section "Modified MLA" formatting (cf. "house style" under Which Citation Style Should I Use?) is to simplify student work on papers written for Section courses while remaining consistent with MLA guideline principles. While students may certainly use the MLA guidelines as they appear in the Style Guide, the English Section "house style" guidelines (see example) usually will be simpler to produce and result in less ambiguity.

Following are some of the differences and the reasoning:

"Works Cited" Listings

1. The full names of publishers may be given, for example Oxford University Press or Prentice-Hall Publishers, Inc. instead of the MLA style of "abbreviating" publisher names (e.g. Oxford UP or Prentice). The MLA guideline assumes usage by advanced scholars who would likely be familiar with mainstream Humanities publishers; this cannot be assumed for general university students. Further, it is simpler for students to give complete publisher references than it is to determine how to "abbreviate" them; this has the additional benefit of being clearer for non-experts to read.

   Likewise, when Citing Newspapers and Periodicals, full spellings of the names of months and words like "edition" may be used instead of their abbreviated forms.

2. Boldface text may be used to indicate titles of major works (and italic text for titles of minor works) rather than the MLA practice of using underscores for major titles and quotation marks for minor titles (a typewriter relic).

3. For HTML versions of papers particularly, the <UL> ("unordered list") command should be used (along with the <LI> "list item" command for each listing) for "Works Cited" entries, rather than the "second-line indentation" MLA practice. Indentations are problematic in HTML, and using an "unordered list" style instead will clearly distinguish between the different Works Cited entries while avoiding the problematics of line indentation.

   List entries may be either single-spaced (the HTML default) or double-spaced (by adding a <P> before each <LI> after the first). If relatively few sources are listed, single-spacing may be easily readable. If numerous sources were used, double-spacing usually provides easier readability.

The Text of the Paper

1. Full-block paragraphing should be used instead of 5-space indentations for paragraphs. This is quicker and neater to produce for digital texts, and avoids problematics encountered when converting to other digital formats (for example between Word and HTML).

2. As with #3 above, boldface and italics may be used for titles rather than underscoring and quotation marks.

3. The <blockquote> command may be used to offset "long" quoted passages by indenting it from the left and right sides. The MLA style only indents the left side of the text; using <blockquote> is not only easier than changing the left-indent margin, but indenting on both sides results in an easier-to-read layout.

4. A "cover page" is not required; it is enough to center the title of the paper (in a larger-size font) and name of the author, course, etc., on the top of the first text page (cf. the PK5 Paper Template, and various student web papers).

5. No "running author line" is necessary in the paper header (see MLA sample page), only page numbers beginning with the second text page (applies only to printout, RTF or PDF versions; not to HTML documents).