Heading
You should head your paper on the top right-hand side of your paper.
Last name, First name
Period
Date
How to do a Title
The title of your paper should be centered at the top of your paper’s first page.
Capitalize the first letter of your title and all the longer important words in your title (not of, and, etc.).
When typing, make the title two font sizes larger, but do not underline or italicize it.
Basic Text Formatting
For handwritten papers, write in blue or black ink unless your teacher allows otherwise.
For typed papers, use some standard black font of 12 point type.
When typing a paper, always double-space.
Be sure to indent all of your paragraphs at least a quarter of an inch.
Do not put an additional line between paragraphs.
For formal papers, use margins of one inch on both sides.
Using Bold, Underlined, and Italics in Text
Italics
Put the the titles of longer works (films, books, newspapers, websites, etc.) in italics.
Do not put the titles of short works (letters, speeches, newspaper article titles, etc.) in italics, use quotations marks.
Use italics for foreign language words not common in English.
Do not italicize quotes, unless the original text was in italics.
Underline
In general, do not use underlining when typing since it make the text look like a link.
Do not underline titles.
When handwriting, underline the titles of longer works.
Bold
Use bold to focus attention on a specific phrase or word.
Do not add bold to quotes unless you explain that you are the one doing the bolding. (You don’t want to mislead your reader that the original author bolded the text.)
James Couture 