Blog

Learning how to write an MLA reference page is very important because you will be doing it over and over again while writing academic papers.

You should title your page as a Works Cited page or a Literature Consulted, or a Works Consulted. It varies depending on what you would like to write. Then you should list your references or primary and secondary works such as books and journals that you have referenced in your paper. You should list them alphabetically and after you've listed the name of the author, last name followed by first name, you are going to list the book from which this author wrote. Then, publishing information. You are not only going to list the publisher, but also the city which it came from.

There are so many different ways to make a Works Cited page in MLA format. Your professor might tell you that you are going to be doing an MLA formatted page but they might give their own reference guide on how they would like you to format it. Make sure that you check with the professor and get their ideas on what they think the Works Cited page should look like. Make sure you are doing whatever your particular professor wants.

More information on MLA format and other academic formats here.

A 5 paragraph essay is probably one of the most important and at the same time easiest types of essay to know how to write because when you are writing for a test, you will be most likely writing five paragraphs or three paragraphs in some cases to constitute an essay that is handwritten on a test.

The following guidelines will not only help you construct an essay on a test very quickly, but also very easily, very efficiently and to get the most out of it.

Writing a five paragraph essay is just like writing any other kind of essay or even writing a paragraph. Each paragraph should have a beginning, middle and an end. In a 5 paragraph essay you should always start off with your first paragraph as your intro where you should provide your actual ideas. The introduction is followed by three paragraphs as your body where you illustrate all the details. Each body paragraph out of these three should be about a different detail. There should be three different details that are very strong, supporting your introduction. The last paragraph is your conclusion.

More information on five paragraph essay.

Pay attention to punctuation rules when writing an essay

You should never start an essay with such words as because, if. It will be an adverb clause and won’t have a complete thought. You should watch your fragments and ensure they have a subject verb and a completed thought.

Another thing that many students make a mistake of is run-ons. Run-ons are two sentences that run together without proper punctuation. Proper punctuation is putting a comma (,) after and, but, for, nor, yet, or. If you have two sentences running together and you just use a comma, it’s a run-on. You must only use a comma after and, but, for, nor, yet, or. Or you may use a semicolon (;) with such as however, therefore, nevertheless, etc. Many high-school teachers and college professors will give you an “F” if you have one run-on sentence. Therefore, make sure and check that. Sometimes it won’t work on your speller or grammar check on your computer. You need to learn how to do this yourself or ask a professional to assist you.

Writing an essay is quite simple if you know which parts it should consist of. Usually, the essay is made of three general parts:

1. Introduction,

2. The body of the essay, and

3. The conclusion.

When writing an introduction you start off with a broad introduction and end up with a very specific point (thesis) at the end of the introduction. The body consists of your arguments or statements. And finally, the conclusion will start at a specific point, normally a summary of your thesis and will generally go back out again to a broad spectrum. For the body you have your own choice. You can either have a descriptive essay or an argumentative essay. For the descriptive essay you generally are just going to provide information to the reader and for the argumentative essay you are going to debate some point.

There’s more information on how to write an essay available here.