Unlike APA formating, papers written in MLA style do not employ cover pages. Identification information goes in the upper left corner, listing the student's name, professor's name, class title, assignment name and the date. Page numbers go in the upper right-hand corner, listing the student's last name along with the specific page number.
Quotations and paraphrased material should always be accompanied by a citation explaining where the student found the information. Acts of plagiarism in college can stem from careless documentation. If a writer forgets to attribute his sources, it gives the false impression that the information originated from the student and not from a primary or secondary source.
MLA guidelines also dictate how sources are to be listed at the end of a paper. Sources cited in the paper must appear in alphabetical order by the author's last name. Specific guidelines exist as to spacing and punctuation.
MLA guidelines for in-text citations and entries on the works cited differ by type. A single-author book must be formatted differently than a multi-authored journal article. Some scholarly periodicals employ continuous pagination by volume, while others employ a new set of page numbers every issue. These are two of many differences. When writing a paper using MLA guidelines, a writer needs the most recent edition of the guidelines.