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Joe Vandal
Instructor C. Hill
ENGL 102
7 April 2017
Implementing Quotations in MLA Style
As Instructor Hill often preaches during her class sessions, “MLA is an art form, a love,
and must be treated with fine care” (Hill). When setting up a document in MLA style, a couple
things to remember are always to remove the extra spacing between paragraphs, do not put any
extra spacing anywhere in the paper (especially around the title), and to always change the last
name and page number at the top corner of the page to Times New Roman 12 point font.
Now, when it comes to including outside material in an essay, this should always be done
with purpose. Quotations should never be simply “plopped” into an essay like sprinkles on an ice
cream cone. Instead, they should be used to support the writer’s voice. Now, let’s head to some
examples.
In his book, Dreary Lane, It’s Even Drearier Now, Far Far Away citizen Muffin Man
makes a strong argument for the deterioration of the town being strongly connected to the
gingerbread protests. For example, he writes, “We are living in culverts of crumbs because of all
these hoodlums strutting the streets” (54). Man’s reference to the filth building up in the streets is
only one example of the downfall of Far Far Away, but it is a striking one. And unpack, unpack
unpack for several sentences. This crisis is simply a “revolutionary moment in our time and
place” (Snow). Another awesome sentence because you should never end on a quote.
This protest crisis all began with a dispute between the Gingerbread Men and their
bakers. They have always had a mutual contract that spells out the Gingerbread Men’s life

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expectancy, but in 2010, the bakers quietly slipped in an addendum right before the annual rental
of the contract that said that the Gingerbread Men’s lives can be sacrificed at any time for the
sake of a sale (Charming). This, obviously, was horrifying to the Gingerbread Men upon their
discovery of this addendum, and they revolted. Look at all this great paraphrased information
giving the context of this crisis. The Gingerbread Men gave their battle cry:
How dare they! [The bakers] would be nothing without us and our gumdrop
buttons. We have been holding this town on our golden brown shoulders for
centuries, and not only is the addendum completely immoral and illegal, it is a
sign of blatant disrespect. This battle cry is over three full lines of text if written
out fully, so that is why this quotation is set off into a block. And an entire battle
cry like this would be a great use of a block quote because you wouldn’t really
want to cut out any of the information to make it shorter. (White)
And then, remember, this next line should be completely left indented because the block quote is
a part of a paragraph. These next several sentences should be very clear, detailed discussion with
this big block quote. Also notice that you put a colon behind the last word of the sentence that
leads into the block quote.
These are all wonderful examples of how to cite outside information in text. Now, onto
the Works Cited page. Remember to have this begin on a brand new page and organize the
citations in alphabetical order. And always remember to indent the second, third, fourth, however
long your citation goes, lines of the citation. If you have any additional questions, consult the
Purdue Online Writing Lab at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Or, as
always, ask Caitlin.

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Works Cited
Charming, King. "A Listing of Far Far Away Small Businesses and their Business Models”
The Far Far Away Public Records. Print.,
Hill, Caitlin. “How to MLA.” ENGL 102, 30 March. 2017, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID.
Class Lecture.
Man, Muffin. Drury Lane: It’s Even Drurier Now. Sprinkle, 2015.
White, Snow. "Avoiding Self-Organized Extinction: A Case Against Eating
Cookies." International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, vol. 14,
no. 1, 2014, pp. 27-36.