Welcome to The Source, your guide to The MLA Style Center’s latest resources on writing, research, and documentation! Tell us what you want to know!
Writing with Style Winners Announced
Congratulations to the winners of The MLA Style Center’s student research paper contest! The five students hail from colleges across the United States and Canada and submitted essays on topics ranging from Dickens to Morrison to community identity in Nova Scotia. All the papers now appear on our Web site as models of MLA style. Read the essays!
Get an expert instructor’s lesson plans—for high school and college students—on integrating quotations into research writing.
Guide Yourself to Better Writing
An MLA editor explains the value of usage guides and shares examples from three guides we use at the MLA! Learn more.
Social Media for Writing Instruction
An expert writing instructor shares why and how he uses social media to engage students in writing. Learn more!
What Are Scare Quotes, and Should You Use Them?
If you’ve used a term skeptically or ironically, you may have put it in quotation marks. But is your meaning clear to your reader? In this post by an MLA editor, you’ll find out the history of scare quotes and why you should use them in moderation. Learn more!
How to Form the Possessive of Inanimate Nouns
According to some usage guides, an inanimate noun—a book, a house, a school—should never take a possessive ’s. Others make exceptions in certain cases. When should you use an apostrophe, and when should you avoid it? Find out!
Citing the MLA's Publication Profession
The MLA publication Profession has been published as an annual print journal and online—on a rolling basis and in three issues per year. How do you cite these different versions? Our editors explain and give you examples. Learn more!
