Properly formatting a paper is good practice for the business world, and also it gives all your work a professional, finished look, as if you really know what you're doing. Then people will tend to read your work with a sense of confidence.

The proper format for all papers you submit in this class or any other should be as follows:

Student name
English 1301
Dr. Jordan
Date

        This is the way all college papers in the humanities should be presented to the instructor unless otherwise specified. Begin by using a clean white sheet of paper and typing or printing in dark black ink. Grey ink will not be accepted. Use a twelve point font, in Times New Roman or Garamond or one of the non-fancy fonts. Set margins for one inch all the way around and the lines to double space. Do not justify the text, which means the right hand edge should be "ragged" and not perfectly straight. Each page should be approximately 250 words. More is acceptable. Less is not. Do a word count and include it at the end of the essay. Most essays should be 750--1000 words, or four pages of properly formatted text.
        Place the four items at the upper left hand top of the page. Skip two lines and write the title. Do not bold, CAPITALIZE all the letters, underline, or put the title in italics or fancy font. Capitalize each important word and all nouns in the title. If the title is the name of an essay or other work, put it in quotation marks. Otherwise, do NOT use quotation marks around your own title. Be sure and include the title; don't skip it.
       DO NOT SKIP LINES BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS. Indent seven spaces instead. On the second and following pages, put your last name in the upper right hand corner. STAPLE the paper.
        When writing about someone else's work, be sure to include the full name of the author and the work in the first paragraph. Also be sure to include your thesis statement, or what you intend to prove in the essay, in that first paragraph. Do not make announcements, i.e. "I am going to discuss the mechanics of Shakespeare's sonnets." Just do it.         Punctuation: periods and commas go inside quotation marks as in the sentence above. Colons and semi-colons go outside. Orphan quotes: if you write a quote, it must have some sort of context; the reader must understand why you quoted what you did. Using quotes incorrectly is a major problem in many essays. Quote for support. Don't use a quote and then explain what it means. That means you're explaining the text and not analyzing some aspect of it. In analysis, you make a statement, then explain the statement, and then support it with a quote, as in:
        The use of color in Dave Finn's "Westborough" suggests death. He describes everything in terms of blackness, dark gray, or colors that are dark and lifeless, as when he says, "The dull blue boat hung in the dark waters, while grey waves washed the listless shore." These descriptions foreshadow the later tragedy when the ship sinks and everyone is killed.
        Internal quotes use the period on the outside of the sentence, as at the end of this one (Jordan 19).