Heading Place your first name followed by your last name, the period number, the date, and the name of your teacher In the upper right corner of the first page only. Title Your instructor will tell you if your paper is to be titled. Center the title on the first page only, slightly below the heading. It should not be capitalized, underlined or enclosed in quotation marks. Capitalize only the first letters of principal words, including the first word and any word after a colon, but leave the first letters of other conjunctions, articles, and prepositions in lower case letters. The names of any works that appear in your title should be punctuated as they would when they appear in your text. Avoid anything that makes the font or size of your title stand out. A separate title page is not necessary except on certain research papers; your teacher will let you know. Printing Print or write legibly, or type on one side of good white 8 1/2 x 1 1 inch paper. Papers reproduced on printers should be letter quality, so please check your ribbon or cartridge first. Handwritten papers should be completed on college ruled paper in blue or black ink only. No rough edged paper, please. When the paper has been printed, staple it together if it is more than a page. Do not fold the edges together or the paper over, and do not use a cover, folder, or binder. Remember that your copy of your composition is proof that it was done. Outside of class work should be stapled outside of class. Fonts and Spacing Select a font that looks professional. Helvetica, Times, New York, Arial, and Palatino are good ones; avoid fancy script or hard to read fonts. Use regular (as opposed to bold or italic) 12 point type. Double-space throughout except for block quotations, which your teacher will cover with you. Handwritten papers may also be double spaced, but your teacher will tell you the accepted format for his/her class. Margins and Pagination Margins on all sides should be 1 to 1 1/2 inches, with page numbers and footnotes placed inside these margins. Print the page number on the right side five lines down from the top of the page, then double-space and begin text. Each page, excluding the first, should be numbered this way. Quoting While many conventions related to quoting and documenting will be covered in your class, the general rule of thumb is to put quotation marks around any word, phrase, or sentence that is taken directly from another source. If the quotation is four lines or fewer, merely keep your usual spacing and enclose the material in quotation marks. Quotations of five lines or more are separated from your text by double spacing before and after, and are single spaced. You may omit the quotation marks before and after these passages. In both cases, place the name of the author and the page number from which the material came within parentheses at the end of the quotation. The period at the end of the sentence goes outside the parentheses. Example: John Claggart shows his cynical side when he says, "I am what I am, and what the world has made me" (Melville 37). Prose quotations of five lines or more should be indented five spaces in from the left margin; poetry quotations should be indented five spaces in from both margins. Proofreading Marks Teachers and writing aides will use standard proofreading marks when correcting student work.