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MLA Title Page | When You Need One & How to Format It

Published on July 12, 2021 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 5, 2024.

In MLA style , a title page is usually not required for your paper. Instead, MLA recommends including a header on your first page listing your name, your instructor’s name, the course name and number, and the submission date, followed by the title of your paper.

However, you should include a separate title page instead in these cases:

• Your instructor requires it
• The paper is a group project (i.e. you need to list multiple authors)

The formats for a separate title page and a first-page header are shown below. You can also use our templates in Word or Google Docs.

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Table of contents

Mla title page format, creating an mla header, frequently asked questions about mla format.

To create an MLA format title page, list the following on separate lines, left-aligned at the top of the page:

• Your co-authors’ names, each on its own line, if it’s a group project
• Your instructor’s name
• The course name and number
• The submission date

Then leave a few blank lines and list the title of the paper, centered and in title case, halfway down the page. All text should be double-spaced and in the same font as the rest of the paper.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Most MLA papers will instead list this information in a header , which appears on the same page as your opening paragraphs instead of on a separate page before them. In the header, left-aligned, list

Then on the next line, write the title of your paper, centered and in title case. On the line after that, start your first paragraph. The header and title should be double-spaced, like the rest of the paper.

Usually, no title page is needed in an MLA paper . A header is generally included at the top of the first page instead. The exceptions are when:

• Your instructor requires one, or
• Your paper is a group project

In those cases, you should use a title page instead of a header, listing the same information but on a separate page.

If you’re working on a group project and therefore need to list multiple authors for your paper , MLA recommends against including a normal header . Instead, create a separate title page .

On the title page, list each author on a separate line, followed by the other usual information from the header: Instructor, course name and number, and submission date. Then write the title halfway down the page, centered, and start the text of the paper itself on the next page.

MLA recommends using 12-point Times New Roman , since it’s easy to read and installed on every computer. Other standard fonts such as Arial or Georgia are also acceptable. If in doubt, check with your supervisor which font you should be using.

MLA Style  is the second most used citation style (after APA ). It is mainly used by students and researchers in humanities fields such as literature, languages, and philosophy.

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• MLA Formatting

Paper Titles (MLA)

Papers need titles.

What Not to Title Your Paper

The title paradox.

• How Much Space between My Title and My Non-Repeating Header
• Do I Use Quotes, etc?

How Do I Center My Title?

What is title case, what if i want to do a title page , what should i title my paper.

Title your paper anything that gives the reader a clue as to what the paper is about. Some people think that, since this is an academic paper, it needs a long, multilevel title:

He Warned Him Twice: The Origins, History, and Controversy of the Mankading Play in Cricket and Its Effects on Racial Tensions between the United Kingdom and India in the Late Twentieth Century

You don't need to go that far. Something simple and too the point.

The Mankading Controversy

Rename the Play

Keep Mankading Legal

Honestly, there are so many things that will work as a title, it would be easier to list the things not to do here.

[Back to Top]

Unless otherwise directed by an instructor, you don't want to title your paper the name of the assignment.

Assignment #2

The Problem Commercial Paper

Commercial Analysis

These do not give the reader any clue what your paper is about. Note that these might be perfectly fine in the file name of your document , because there the job of the file name isn't to give the reader a clue about the contents of your paper. Instead, it's to identify which assignment that paper has been written in response to. They have different rules because they're responding to different needs.

While we're at it, don't put the word "Essay" or "Paper" in your title. Of course it's your paper. Of course it's an essay. These words add no information.

The title is your reader's first clue into the main idea of your paper, and it can be a powerfully efficient tool for setting the tone of the paper and establishing the theme. However, despite its utility, you want to write your paper as if your reader will ignore your title. For instance, if you title your paper "How Much Does a Salad Weigh," don't start your introduction with "It depends on the ingredients."

This is because readerly norms are such that there is no expectation that an essay's title flows into the body of the essay. If we were writing poetry, we would be having a different conversation right now, but we're not. Your title is an aid to the beginning of your essay, not a replacement.

Formatting Your Title

The MLA Handbook has this to say about titles:

Beginning one inch from the top of the first page and flush with the left margin, type your name, your instructor’s name (or instructors’ names, if there is more than one instructor), the course number, and the date on separate lines, double-spacing the lines. Months may be spelled out or abbreviated. On a new, double-spaced line, center the title. Do not italicize or underline your title, put it in quotation marks or boldface, or type it in all capital letters. Follow the rules for capitalization in the MLA Handbook (67–68), and italicize only the words that you would italicize in the text.

Here's a picture of what they mean:

We'll break down the parts of that explanation below. Note that the picture above has formatting marks turned on. Take a look at the page about indentation to see how to turn those on and off.

How Much Space between My Title and the Non-Repeating Header?

First of all, if you need to be refreshed on it, feel free to look back at the page for the Non-Repeating Header .

Now, if you take a look at the image above, you'll see that there is only a single return marker after the date (the last line in the NRH), and then we have the title.

Yes, only hit enter once.

A lot of times, people will hit enter, enter, enter, enter... until it "looks right" to them. But remember the whole point of style guides is that you don't have to guess, estimate, or memorize anything. All the standards are in an easily findable place.

After your NRH, hit enter once.

Then put in your title.

Hit enter once.

Then start typing the body.

There should be no more space around your title than there are between lines of text in your document.

Do I Use Quotes, etc.?

Do not put the title of your own paper in quotes. Do not italicize it. Do not put it in bold face. Do not put it in a larger or otherwise different font.

You may do some of these things (namely the quotes and italics) when you mention the titles of other works in your essay. But that's a citation issue. Here, we're talking about the title of your paper .

The only two things you will do to mark your title as a title are

• Use title case

Many times, students know that they are supposed to center their titles, but don't know the best way to do that. As a result, many students attempt to center their titles by hitting space until it looks like it's in the right place.

However, here you run into the same problems you ran into when you try to use the space bar to indent your paragraphs:

• It's not precise (it's hard to line it up perfectly)
• It's not stable (it will show up different ways on different computers)

There are two reliable and stable ways to format a piece of text.

First you can use the center button.

You can find it on the home tab (red oval in the picture below), as part of the paragraph block (red square). The button looks like four lines of centered text.

The other way to center text (which is a lot less tedious), is to use the keyboard command:

If your typing cursor is on the paragraph you want to center, hold Ctrl, hit E, and it will now be centered.

Note, though, that only your title needs to be centered. If you are typing the text of your essay and find that it's also centered, you''ll either want to hit the "Left Align" button (to the left of the "Center" button) or hit Ctrl + L to go back to normal.

Title case is the way you capitalize titles. You might notice that tiles in English seem to use different capitalization rules than the rest of your writing. Here are those rules:

• Capitalize the first word of the title
• Capitalize the last word of the title
• articles (in English, these are "a, an, the")
• conjunctions ( such as "and, but, or")
• prepositions ( such as "in, on, between")

When in doubt, here's a handy online title case converter .

Well, the important question is, does your professor require a title page (also known as a cover page)?

Most don't.

I don't want to see a title page.

Don't do a title page unless specifically requested to do one. If requested, your professor will likely have a standard they prefer. Use that.

MLA does not have a standard for title pages or cover pages. Other formatting styles do. So if you're in a class that uses a style that requires a cover page, check that style guide.

This is why I do not advise my students to attempt to memorize MLA standards--because you may often be working with a different standard when you get to your major.

The important thing is not to know MLA. The important thing is to know to check your style guide, and to be able to implement its standards.

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