Formatting+Your+Paper

=Formatting Your Paper=

Before you can start writing your paper or even start your research, your paper must be correctly formatted, meaning in correct MLA format. Remember on the Grading Rubric I said that points would be taken off for this. So, unless you want points taken off for something relatively minor, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted.

What you need to do is as follows:


 * 1) Make sure you are logged on under your name on your computer or make sure you have a flash drive with you so you do not lose your paper once it has been saved. If you save it to the desktop, it will be wiped once the computer is turned off.
 * 2) Open up a new Word Document. Once you've done that, go ahead and save your document **under your named directory on the hard drive or on your flash drive.** If you are unsure of how to do that, let me know and I will help you.
 * 3) Click "File" up at the top of the window. Scroll down the menu and click on "Page Setup." Here is where you change your margins. You need to make sure the margins of your paper--the entire paper: top, bottom, left and right--are all set to 1 inch. Once you've done that, click "OK."
 * 4) Next, you need to change your line spacing of your paper to double. To do that, you can hold down "Ctrl" and the number "2." If you don't want to do it that way, go to "Format" and click on "Paragraph." In the section labeled "Spacing," make sure you change line spacing to "Double." Click "Ok" when you've finished.
 * 5) Next, we'll format the header on your first page. On the first line, type your first and last name. Hit enter. Next type "Ms. Garris." Hit enter. Type "English 10." Hit enter. Then enter the date (exactly as I give it to you) "16 December 2010." Hit enter again.
 * 6) You should now be on a blank line. You need to center your cursor now. To do that, you can go to the toolbar with all the icons and hit the center alignment that way or go to "Format" and "Paragraph" again and where it has "Alignment," change it to "Center." On this line, you need to just type Title. This is where the title of your paper is going to go. Hit enter again and change your alignment back to left.
 * 7) Next, we're going to format the header for all the pages of your paper. What you need to do is go to "View" and click on "Header and Footer." Once you click that, you should have a dotted box pop up at the top of the page. This is your header. In this box, you need to right align your cursor. Once you've done that, type your **last name only**. Next, you need to go to the floating toolbar on your screen and you should see an icon that looks like a sheet of paper with the number symbol (#) on it. With your cursor right behind your last name, click that button. That will automatically add page numbers to your paper.
 * 8) Save your document.

At this point, you have set up your paper. There are other things you will have to do as you write your paper, but at this point, your paper is ready to be started. You should now head over to Starting Your Research.