MLA is a format used mostly by students and scholars in the areas of English and other different languages and literatures, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, and Literary Criticism.
The overall format of an MLA style paper is that the margins are set to 1 inch on all four sides and page numbers on the upper right hand corner of each page. In the upper left hand corner of the front page, there should be your name (as the author), your instructor's name, the course name and number, and the date. The spacing on that information should be double spaced.
To attribute ownership of an idea or quotation within your manuscript, the MLA format requires you to create a citation list for works you used to help support your idea or theory. There is a separate page at the end of the document for you to properly list out your sources. The proper formatting for the works cited page is to have it all double spaced between separate sources, with single spacing between lines of the same source. Also, each source should use a hanging indent, which means that the first line of each source is touching the left margin and every line in that source after the first line is indented one-half inch. Also, only use either underlining or italics for the title of the work being cited, but it is not necessary to do both. Just use the same throughout, whichever you choose. The last name of the author of your source comes first. Also, each source should be in alphabetical order according to author's last name. When citing books, the information for the source should be in this order: author's last name, author's first name, title of source, underlined (or italicized), place of publication, publisher, and date. When citing articles, the information should be in this order: author's name (inverted), article title, title of magazine or journal (underlined or italicized), date and page numbers.
When you are borrowing someone else's idea to support your own, you attribute ownership to that person by placing their statement in quotation marks. You use quotation marks when the quote you are using is five lines or less long. If the quote is longer than five lines, you will take the quote out of the quotation marks and use a "block quote", in which you indent the entire quote one inch from the left-hand margin. Any source that you quote within your document needs to be cited on your works cited page.