MLA Sample Paper

Your name, Page numbers Angeli 1 the begin on page professor's 1 and end on Green text boxes name, Elizabeth L. Angeli the final contain explanations the course page. Type of MLA style number, and your name Professor Patricia Sullivan guidelines. the date of next to the the paper are page number in the header double- English 624 Blue boxes contain so that it spaced in 12- directions for writing appears on point, Times 12 February 2012 and citing in MLA every page. New Roman style. font. Dates in MLA are Titles are written in this Toward a Recovery of Nineteenth Century Farming Handbooks centered and written order: day, in 12-point, month, and While researching texts written about nineteenth century farming, I found a few year. Times New Roman authors who published books about the literature of nineteenth century farming, font. The title is not bolded, particularly agricultural journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and brochures. These authors underlined, or The italicized. introduc- often placed the farming literature they were studying into an historical context by tory paragraph, discussing the important events in agriculture of the year in which the literature was or The thesis introduc- published (see Demaree, for example). However, while these authors discuss journals, statement tion, should is often set the (but not context for newspapers, pamphlets, and brochures, I could not find much discussion about another always) the the rest of last the paper. important source of farming knowledge: farming handbooks. My goal in this paper is to sentence of Tell your the readers introductio- why you bring this source into the agricultural literature discussion by connecting three n. are writing The thesis and why agricultural handbooks from the nineteenth century with nineteenth century agricultural is a clear your topic position is history. that you important. will support and To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into four main sections, two of develop throughout If your which have sub-sections. In the first section, I provide an account of three important your paper. paper is This long, you sentence may want events in nineteenth century agricultural history: population and technological changes, guides or to write controls about how the distribution of scientific new knowledge, and farming’s influence on education. In the your paper. your paper is organized. second section, I discuss three nineteenth century farming handbooks in MLA requires This will double-spacing help your connection with the important events described in the first section. I end my paper throughout a readers document. Do follow not single- your ideas. space any part of the document. Angeli 2 with a third section that offers research questions that could be answered in future When using headings in versions of this paper and conclude with a fourth section that discusses the importance of Use MLA, title personal the main expanding this particular project. I also include an appendix after the Works Cited that pronouns sections (I, we, us, (Level 2 etc.) at headers) in contains images of the three handbooks I examined. Before I can begin the examination your a different instructor’s style font of the three handbooks, however, I need to provide an historical context in which the discretion. than the paper’s The headings used here follow a three- title, e.g., in books were written, and it is to this that I now turn. level system to break the text into small caps. smaller sections. The different levels Head s, help organize the paper and maintain ing though not consistency in the paper’s organization. required by ISTORICAL ONTEXT You may come up with your own H C MLA style, headings as long as they are consistent. The can help the paragraph The nineteenth century saw many changes to daily American life with an increase in overall after the structure and Level 2 organization headers population, improved methods of transportation, developments in technology, and the of a paper. start flush Use them at left after rise in the importance of science. These events impacted all aspects of nineteenth century your the instructor’s headings. discretion to American life (most significantly, those involved in slavery and the Civil War). help your reader follow However, one part of American life was affected that is quite often taken for granted: the your ideas. life of the American farmer. Population and Technological Changes. One of the biggest changes, as seen in Use another style, e.g., nineteenth century America’s census reports, is the dramatic increase in population. The italics, to differen- 1820 census reported that over 10 million people were living in America; of those 10 If there is a tiate the gramma- Level 3 tical, headers million, over 2 million were engaged in agriculture. Ten years prior to that, the 1810 mechanical, from the or spelling Level 2 census reported over 7 million people were living in the states; there was no category for error in the headers. text you are The citing, type paragraph people engaged in agriculture. In this ten-year time span, then, agriculture experienced the quote as continues it appears. directly significant improvements and changes that enhanced its importance in American life. Follow the after the error with header. One of these improvements was the developments of canals and steamboats, “[sic].” which allowed farmers to “sell what has previously been unsalable [sic]” and resulted in a Angeli 3 “substantial increase in [a farmer’s] ability to earn income” (Danhof 5). This improvement allowed the relations between the rural and urban populations to strengthen, Use resulting in an increase in trade. The urban population (defined as having over 2,500 endnotes to explain a inhabitants) in the northern states increased rapidly after 1820.1 This increase point in your paper that would accompanied the decrease in rural populations, as farmers who “preferred trade, otherwise disrupt the flow of the transportation, or ‘tinkering’” to the tasks of tending to crops and animals found great text. opportunities in the city (Danhof 7). Trade and transportation thus began to influence In-text farming life significantly. Before 1820, the rural community accounted for eighty percent Insert the citations footnote occur of consumption of farmers’ goods (Hurt 127). With the improvements in transportation, after the after the punctuatio quote but n mark before the twenty-five percent of farmers’ products were sold for commercial gain, and by 1825, that period. concludes The farming “became a business rather than a way of life” (128). This business required the author’s/ sentence. authors’ name/s go farmers to specialize their production and caused most farmers to give “less attention to before the page the production of surplus commodities like wheat, tobacco, pork, or beef” (128). The number with no comma in increase in specialization encouraged some farmers to turn to technology to increase their between. production and capitalize on commercial markets (172). The technology farmers used around 1820 was developed from three main sources: Europe, coastal Native American tribes in America, and domestic modifications made from the first two sources’ technologies. Through time, technology improved, and while some farmers clung to their time-tested technologies, others were eager to find alternatives to these technologies. These farmers often turned to current developments in Great Britain and received word of their technological improvements through firsthand knowledge by talking with immigrants and travelers. Farmers also began planning and conducting experiments, and although they lacked a truly scientific approach, these farmers engaged Angeli 4 in experiments to obtain results and learn from the results.2 Agricultural organizations were then formed to “encourage . experimentation, hear reports, observe results, and If you exchange critical comments” (Danhof 53). Thus, new knowledge was transmitted orally delete Transitions words from farmer to farmer, immigrant to farmer, and traveler to farmer, which could result in connect from the paragraphs original and unify quotation, the miscommunication of this new scientific knowledge. Therefore, developments were writing. insert an Notice how ellipsis, made for knowledge to be transmitted and recorded in a more permanent, credible way: this three paragraph periods ends with a with a by print. brief space mention of between print and after The Distribution of New Knowledge. Before 1820 and prior to the new knowledge sources each one. and the farmers were creating, farmers who wanted print information about agriculture had their next paragraph Body begins with paragraphs choice of agricultural almanacs and even local newspapers to receive information a often (but discussion don’t (Danhof 54). After 1820, however, agricultural writing took more forms than almanacs of print always) informa- have these tion. four and newspapers. From 1820 to 1870, agricultural periodicals were responsible for elements: a transition, spreading new knowledge among farmers. In his published dissertation The American a topic Titles of sentence, published evidence, Agricultural Press 1819-1860, Albert Lowther Demaree presents a “description of the works and a brief (books, wrap-up general content of [agricultural journals]” (xi). These journals began in 1819 and were journals, sentence. films, etc.) are now Notice how written for farmers, with topics devoted to “farming, stock raising, [and] horticulture” italicized this instead of paragraph (12). The suggested “birthdate” of American agricultural journalism is April 2, 1819 underlined. begins with a transition. when John S. Skinner published his periodical American Farmer in Baltimore. Demaree The topic sentence writes that Skinner’s periodical was the “first continuous, successful agricultural follows the transition, and it tells periodical in the United States” and “served as a model for hundreds of journals that readers what the succeeded it” (19). In the midst of the development of the journal, farmers began writing paragraph is about.

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