This page is a working example, not another rules list. Below is a short MLA student paper — "The Rhetoric of the Opening Scene" — shown in the layout it would have when printed, with every element annotated. Each block reproduces the exact Times New Roman, double-spaced look of MLA output; the notes around each block explain what you are seeing and why it is formatted that way.
The paper answers the same question our introduction and conclusion guides use, so if you want the writing advice behind these paragraphs, those guides have it. Here, the focus is the formatting.
Document Overview
- Page 1
First page
Header, four-line heading, centered title, opening paragraph.
- Pages 2–N
Body pages
Header only at the top — no heading, no title. The essay continues.
- Works Cited
Works Cited
Centered title, then entries that hang from the left margin.
Page 1: The Complete First Page
The sample's first page stacks four elements in order: the running header in the top margin, the four-line heading, the centered title, and the first indented paragraph.
Rubio 1
Sofia Rubio
Professor Chen
English 101
12 October 2025
The Rhetoric of the Opening Scene
Every film makes a promise in its first minutes. Before the title appears, the camera, the sound, and the performances begin establishing what kind of story the audience is about to watch. Both Parasite (2019) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) open in homes, yet the spaces they stage could not function more differently, and that difference is the point: each director uses the opening scene to train the audience in how the film must be read. Across the setting, the sound design, and the first character we meet, both films turn domestic space into a forecast of the story to come.
Reading the annotations
- Running header. "Rubio 1" sits in the top-right at half an inch from the top edge. It is the last name, one space, and the page number — no "p.", no hyphen. See the MLA header guide.
- Heading. The four lines below the header are flush left and start one inch from the top: name, instructor, course, date. The date is Day Month Year, no comma, no ordinal. See the first-page format guide.
- Title. Centered on the double-spaced line after the heading, plain text — no bold, no quotes, no period.
- First paragraph. Begins on the line after the title, indented half an inch. No blank line anywhere on the page.
- In-text citation. Wait — there is none here. That is normal: the introduction cites no outside source. Citations appear as soon as a source is used.
Page 2: Body Paragraphs and Citations
From page two on, the heading disappears. Only the running header remains, and it advances with the page number. Every paragraph keeps the half-inch first-line indent.
Rubio 2
The pressure of poverty in Parasite is registered first as vertical space. The Kim family occupies a half-basement apartment, its window at street level, so that the city passes by at ankle height. When the family looks up, they see drunks urinating on their wall; when they look out, they watch legs go by (Bong 00:07:12). In the same opening minutes, the sound of passing traffic and city sirens keeps the outside world pressing in, a constant reminder that the family's shelter sits below the life of the street.
The opposite grammar organizes the opening of The Silence of the Lambs. Clarice Starling runs through a fog-choked forest and into a suspension bridge, alone and in control, before returning to an isolated lake house. Where the Kims' space crowds them, Starling's space isolates her (Demme 00:03:40). The discipline of her morning run reads as an achieved order, and the plot's great disruption will be its collapse. Critics have argued that such interiors carry the films' meaning more than their dialogue does; the setting does not merely support the story but stages the class conflict that the plot will dramatize (Moreno 112).
Reading the annotations
- Running header continues. When not citing a source, same name and number, page advanced to 2.
- Film citations use timestamps. "(Bong 00:07:12)" cites a director as author and the timecode as the "page." The full film entry lives in Works Cited. See the MLA in-text citation guide.
- Author-page citation. "(Moreno 112)" follows the standard author-page model; the complete article citation appears in Works Cited.
- Italics. Film titles are italicized whenever they appear in the text.
Section Headings in the Body
This short essay does not need section headings — MLA says to avoid overusing them in short projects. A longer version of the paper would label its parts, and those labels would sit flush left. Shown below is how a level-one section heading would look between paragraphs on page three:
Rubio 3
Read together, the two openings reveal a shared technique: both directors build the room before they introduce the conflict.
Space as Prophecy
The suggestion that a set can function as prophecy is not new to these films.
The section heading is bold, flush left, and title-cased — consistent with the guidance in the MLA section headings guide. Only the paper's own title is centered.
Block Quotations
Quotations of more than three typed lines in prose are set off as block quotations: the entire quote indents half an inch (one tab) from the left margin, there are no quotation marks, and in-text citation follows the closing punctuation — not before it as with short quotes.
In this reading, the opening scenes can be described in nearly architectural terms:
To be, or not to be — that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles (Shakespeare 3.1.55–58).
The four quoted lines are indented the same half inch as a paragraph's first line, but every line of the quote is indented, making it a distinct block. The parenthetical citation comes after the closing period, outside the quote.
The Works Cited Page
The Works Cited list begins on its own page after the conclusion. The heading "Works Cited" is centered (the one centered heading other than the paper title), and every entry uses a hanging indent: the first line is flush left, and each continued line is indented half an inch.
Rubio 5
Works Cited
Bong Joon-ho, director. Parasite. CJ Entertainment, 2019.
Demme, Jonathan, director. The Silence of the Lambs. Orion Pictures, 1991.
Moreno, Elena. "Domestic Space as Narrative Device in Contemporary Cinema." Journal of Film Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2023, pp. 105–21.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Reading the annotations
- New page. Works Cited starts on a fresh page after the essay's last page (here, page 5).
- Centered title. "Works Cited" is centered, plain text, no period.
- Alphabetical order. Entries sort by the first word: Bong, Demme, Moreno, Shakespeare.
- Hanging indent. First line flush left; every continued line indented half an inch.
- Core elements. Each entry runs author, title, container, publisher, date, location — with periods after most elements and "pp." for page ranges.
- The MLA Works Cited guide explains each element in full.
Reproduce This Example in Five Steps
- Document setup: one-inch margins everywhere, 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced (set the paragraph style once).
- Header: insert the running header in the header area — last name, space, page number field — and align right.
- Page 1: type name, instructor, course, date flush left; center the title one line below; begin the first paragraph indented.
- Body: indent every paragraph with Tab, keep the text left-aligned, cite sources in parentheses as you use them.
- Works Cited: start a new page, center "Works Cited," and add entries alphabetically with hanging indents.
Prefer to build it by hand with less clicking? The MLA Format Checker will audit margins, font, spacing, indents, and header setup, and the MLA Formatter can apply the whole layout automatically.
Build and Check Your Own Paper
Apply the formatting automatically, then verify every element against the example above.