10 November 2026

MLA Format Checker: Check Your Paper Against MLA 9

MLA format is the first thing your professor sees and the last thing most students check. A wrong heading or a missing page number won't fail your essay, but it tells a picky reader you rushed. The good news: MLA is short, and you can check all of it in ten minutes.

This checklist follows the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook (2021), the current version. Work through it with your paper open.

Page layout

Check these first, because they apply to every page:

• 1-inch margins on all sides.
• A readable 12-point font such as Times New Roman.
• Double-spaced throughout, including quotes and the Works Cited page.
• Each paragraph's first line indented half an inch.
• Your last name and the page number in the top right corner of every page, half an inch from the top: Ramirez 4.

The first-page heading

MLA papers don't use a title page unless your instructor asks for one. Instead, the MLA heading goes in the top left corner of page one, double-spaced:

• Your name
• Your instructor's name
• The course
• The date, written day month year: 8 November 2026

Then check the title:

• Centered on the line below the heading.
• In title case, with no bold, underlining or quotation marks around your own title.
• Your first paragraph starts on the very next line, with no extra space.

In-text citations

MLA uses the author's last name and a page number, with no comma between them. Check each citation:

• One author: (Ramirez 45) or Ramirez argues ... (45).
• Two authors: (Ramirez and Okafor 45).
• Three or more authors: (Ramirez et al. 45).
• No page numbers (most websites): the author's name alone is enough: (Ramirez).
• No author: a shortened title in quotation marks or italics, matching how it appears in your Works Cited: ("Rising Tuition" 3).
• Long quotes of more than four lines are set as a block, indented half an inch, with no quotation marks.

Then the check that matters most: every in-text citation leads to an entry in your Works Cited, starting with the same word. If your citation says (Ramirez 45), your Works Cited needs an entry that starts with "Ramirez".

The Works Cited page

Check the page:

• Starts on a new page titled Works Cited, centered, with no bold or quotation marks.
• Sorted alphabetically by the first word of each entry.
• Double-spaced, with a half-inch hanging indent.

Then check each entry. MLA 9 builds every entry from the same nine core elements, in this order, skipping any that don't apply:

1. Author.
2. Title of source.
3. Title of container (the journal, website or book it's part of),
4. Other contributors,
5. Version,
6. Number,
7. Publisher,
8. Publication date,
9. Location (pages, a DOI or a URL).

A journal article then looks like this:

Ramirez, Ana, and Chidi Okafor. "Who Pays for College?" Journal of Higher Education Policy, vol. 12, no. 3, 2024, pp. 40–58.

Watch for the details professors mark most:

• Titles of articles and web pages in quotation marks; titles of books, journals and websites in italics.
• Two authors: the first reversed (last name first), the second in normal order.
• Three or more authors: the first author followed by "et al."
• "vol.", "no." and "pp." abbreviated and lowercase.

What formatting can't tell you

A perfect Works Cited page can still list a source that doesn't say what you claim, or one that doesn't exist. If you used AI at any point in your research, read our citation checker guide before you submit.

PickyProf checks both at once. It flags MLA that's applied inconsistently, citations with no matching Works Cited entry and sources it can't find, and reviews your argument and structure in the same pass.

Want a picky second reader before you submit? Upload your essay to PickyProf and get every formatting and citation problem flagged, with what to change.

Read next

• APA Citation Checker: The APA 7 Checklist for Your Paper
• Citation Checker: How to Make Sure Every Source in Your Paper Is Real

Jordan Mungujakisa

/ Software Developer

BEng in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering