Format
Punctuation
Grammar
Style
Formatting and Citing Quotations
Works Cited Format

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Format:

• have a title page, with the title of your essay, your name, date, and course number and title
• have page numbers in the upper right hand corner, after the first page
• be typed or printed out with left justification (left margin straight, right uneven)
• be typed or printed out double-spaced
• indicate paragraphing by indentation, not by extra spacing between lines

• Dashes are made by typing two hyphens together, no spaces:

Jewett's "A White Heron"--unlike her novels--is such a work.

• Book, record album, movie and play titles should be printed in italic font; chapter, essay, short story, poem, and song titles should be enclosed in quotes:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous sonnet, "How Do I Love Thee" was published in her book, Sonnets from the Portuguese.

• Plurals are formed by adding s (or an irregular ending), not by using an apostrophe

NOT: The Poe's and Dickinson's of this world are always scorned.

BUT: The Poes and Dickinsons of this world are always scorned.

• Apostrophes to indicate the possessive should be placed properly to signify whether the noun is singular or plural:

We went to Janet Rose's store. // Bronte's character's conflict. . . . (singular)

We went to the Roses' store. // The characters' conflict. . . . (plural)

• It's is a contraction for it is; the personal pronoun is its (no apostrophe)

It's going to be a long day for its mother.

• Nouns and all pronouns that refer to them should agree in number:

NOT: When an author emphasizes the setting in their story. . . .

BUT: When an author emphasizes the setting in his or her story. . . .

OR: When authors emphasize the setting in their stories. . . .

• NOTE: everyone, everybody, someone, anyone, no one, are all singular:

Everybody brings his or her own experience to a literary text.

No one should be disappointed if this novel does not meet his or her expectations.

Anyone who doesn't like this novel should reflect on his or her expectations.

• Do not use a "billboard" thesis and organization step (In this essay I will show. . . by first looking at. . . .). The thesis statement simply should state directly the claim or proposition the essay will argue and imply the essay's organization.

"The Old Forest" overthrows traditional definitions of femininity in its settings, characterizations of female characters, and its plot resolution.

• Avoid general, vague words such as aspects, facets, factors, situations,unless you are using them accurately (the aspects of a sculpture, the facets of a diamond, the factors in a formula).
• Always follow the pronoun this with a noun:

NOT: This always occurs in Mary Gordon's novels about this.

BUT: This conflict always occurs in Mary Gordon's novels about relationships.

• Use inclusive language: his or hers, he and she.
• The pronoun it always should refer back to a previously established antecedent, not forward to something not yet identified in the sentence:

NOT: It is in this way that Melville defeated his editors.

BUT: Melville defeated his editors in this way.

• Make sentence or clause openings strong: don't open with there is [are, were, was]:

NOT: There are good reasons for Joyce Carol Oates' popularity.

BUT: Good reasons for Joyce Carol Oates' popularity are. . . .

• Try as much as possible to keep verb parts together:

NOT: Donne's poems should always be read with his sermons in mind.

BUT: DonneÌs poems always should be read with his sermons in mind.

• Use you to directly address the reader; do not use it to mean "everybody," one," or "people" in general:

When you interpret one interprets a poem, youone always should start by . . . .

• Use since to mean duration of time; use becauseto indicate causal relationship:

Since Because many readers interpret poems differently, . . . .

• The first time you refer to an auithor in your writing, you should refer to him or her by full name. Thereafter, always refer to the author by last name only, not by first name.
• Keep all references to the text you are writing about in the present tense.This guideline applies to details about the narrative, the plot, the characters and their actions, and the setting:

Sylvia arises before morning to seek the heron's nest. As she walks through the woods, she hears a bird twittering overhead. Jewett writes that she hears the bird "with a sense of comfort and companionship."

• When you quote a line or passage from a text, always have a reason for doing so. Usually, that reason is to support an assertion you have just made about the text. Thus, you preface the quote with an assertion.
• You then present the quotation, making sure that you use an appropriate transition, either a phrase (such as "The character says. . ." or "The narrator tells us. . .") or a colon. You then follow the quote with an explanation that makes explicit how the quote supports your point.
• Always place a quotation within your own sentence by using a transition such as "she describes how" or "the character declares," or by linking the quotation to your sentence with a colon:
• Establishing foreshadowing in the first section of the novel, Conrad describesa war ship under "the immensity of earth, sky, amid water" as being "incomprehensible, firing into a continent."

• Establishing foreshadowing in the first section of the novel, Conrad describes a war ship off the African coast: "In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent." (Note the use of the colon as a connector.)
• Periods and commas should be typed inside quotation marks:

Jewett's "A White Heron," in which the narrator asks the woods to "bring their gifts" to the protagonist, shares much with Thoreau's essay, "Walking."

• Quotations indented in a block (used for quotation of more than two sentences or more than seven lines) should not be enclosed in quotation marks
• Use ellipses to indicate elisions in a quoted text (note format of the punctuation in the example):

"She stared. . . until he spoke." 3 periods--Internal elision

"She stared until he spoke. . . ." 4 periods--end of sentence.

• Use brackets (not parentheses) to indicate any insertions you make into a quotation:

"She stared [at her husband] until he spoke."

• Line breaks in quotations of poems are indicated with a slash:

The speaker claims, "Whose woods these are I think I know./His house is in the village, though."

Format for citation in text:

Establishing foreshadowing in the first section of the novel, Conrad describes a war ship under "the immensity of earth, sky, and water" as being "incomprehensible, firing into a continent" (Conrad 29).

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Book:

Article, story, essay, poem printed in a Journal:

Work reprinted in a book:

Fish, Stanley E. "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics." New Literary History 2 (1970): 123-61. Rpt. in Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. 21-67.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Rpt. in The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Volume 1. Edited by Paul Lauter et. al. Second Edition. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994. 1406-10.

Work published in a book edited by another person:

Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature. Ed. Leon Roudiez. Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1980.

*NOTE: You must use a hanging indentation in citations; that is, you must indent every line below the first in a citation entry. HTML 3.x cannot display these indentations.