Whether you’re a high school or college student, at some point in your academic career you will need to know how to write an essay If you want to know how to write an essay or more specifically, how to write in mla format, do some research on the internet. This means putting the format you might want to use into your search engine, tapping the Enter key and reviewing the results that appear on your monitor. Determining which site might be the one you use for essay writing is an important decision you must make.

All essays have the following components: an introduction with a catchy hook that draws your reader in, a thesis statement that you will either prove or refute in your paper, several paragraphs that your thesis and a conclusion that wraps up what you’ve written. Adhering to the old statement "tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you’ve told them" is very pertinent when you’re constructing your essay.

If you want to know how to write in MLA format, other formatting requirements include a a header with an your last name and sequential page numbering. MS Word™ has a special formatting function that handles this quite well. In-text citations are necessary, also. The usual way for MLA is author’s name and then year written; both are surrounded by parentheses. For every in-text citation, a more in-depth reference is noted on the essay’s separate work cited page. A reference usually consists of author last name, first name, title of book or magazine underlined, place of publication, publisher and then year of publication. Don’t forget to run spell check and check that words are correct contextually.

One important thing to remember is that all web sites are not equally viable. So before you decide to put your faith in a web site’s style guidelines, try to make sure it’s reputable. If there are miss-spellings, sentences that don’t make sense or some other red flags, simply go on to another site that makes a more professional presentation. One of them will provide information on how to do MLA format.