Quick answer: MLA formatting and citation deserve time in your class because they’re one of the few writing skills students can master with total clarity. Plus, inconsistent teaching among teachers and grade levels leaves students confused, frustrated, and unprepared for college expectations. Short, well-structured MLA lessons, reinforced across the year, can help you solve these problems.
If you’ve ever posed a question about MLA in a meeting with your colleagues, you probably know the topic can turn into a debate (or bring out insecurities) fast. I’ve watched more than one meeting go sideways due to disagreements over something as small as where a parenthetical citation goes. Does it belong at the end of the sentence or the end of the paragraph? Do we need one only after direct quotes? (The answers are as follows: at the end of the sentence, and no, we need to cite after paraphrased details and ideas too.)
And it’s not just disagreement; sometimes it’s outright avoidance. I’ve sat across the table from a colleague who got defensive and irritated at the mere mention of it: “I don’t teach this. My degree isn’t in English Lit or Comp. I don’t do ‘nitty gritty.’” Meanwhile, a teacher with sixty-plus years in the classroom said she’d happily accept either method, so long as students were consistent. MLA’s guidance really is a bit vague, but somehow we all leave a meeting like that a little more sure WE are right than when we walked in.
Teachers often have very different ideas about how MLA citation and formatting should work, and whether MLA even matters. Many don’t teach it at all. If we can’t agree on the rules amongst ourselves (or feel confident enough to teach them), it’s no wonder our students are confused and frustrated whenever MLA comes up.
The level of confusion and frustration students demonstrate whenever formatting and citation come up is exactly why MLA formatting needs to be taught, not just assigned. It’s easy to treat formatting as an afterthought. We often think of formatting and citation rules as things students should already know or as things they can “just look up” when they need to. But when we skip direct instruction, we’re not actually saving time like we think we are. Either we have to write all sorts of comments and corrections on student work each time they turn it in, or if we ignore those issues, we’re passing the problem down the line to the next teacher, the next paper, or eventually a college professor who has much less patience for MLA problems in papers than we might.
Why Formatting and Citation Inconsistency Teaches the Wrong Lesson
I’m sure you’ve seen it before: even within the same department, teachers don’t always agree on basic citation and formatting rules.
At my school, I was lucky. After a few years, we had a great group with a strong shared reputation. We agreed on the rules, talked about them often, and shared the same teaching materials and handouts for MLA. (You can grab them here!)
But that’s often not the case within English departments. Think about the student caught in the middle of changing expectations every year. Does it look a little like this?
Freshman year: “Cite every sentence if you’ve used a detail or quote from the text, but I don’t care if you don’t use an MLA header.” Sophomore year: “One citation per paragraph is fine; just put it at the end before your final period. No MLA header? Minus 10 points.” Junior year: a third teacher, a third method: “Now we’re using APA instead of MLA. You’ll use the date and year rather than a page number in your parentheticals, and you’ll need a title page.” Senior year: “Just throw a Works Cited at the end; that’s good enough. I don’t care about in-text citation.”
That kid doesn’t walk out of your building thinking “the rules around citation and formatting are nuanced.” He or she walks out thinking formatting and citation rules are arbitrary, simply a box to check for a grade, not a real, masterable skill. And what happens when that student lands in a college class (or a job) where nobody’s going to shrug this stuff off the way their high school teachers may have?
I Love Teaching MLA Because MLA Is a Skill Students Can Actually Master
Yes, that’s “love” and “MLA” in the same sentence! I genuinely do love teaching it. Here’s why: unlike voice or organization, which take years to develop, MLA formatting is concrete. There’s a right way and a wrong way to set up a header, cite a source, and build a Works Cited page. A kid who’s terrified of essay writing can still nail the heading, margins, and Works Cited page. He or she can know, upon submission, that getting those right means real, earned points on that paper. (Grab my MLA rubric here!)
For students who don’t see themselves as “good writers,” this can be a godsend. I tell everyone that a clean, correctly formatted paper is an easy, step-one, achievable win. In my class, getting it right means they’ve already earned +10 points before I’ve even read a word of content. That’s gold. It’s a genuine, achievable win for every single kid in the room, including the ones who don’t think of themselves as “good at English.” It builds confidence they carry into the rest of the paper, and it helps them see that I’m on their side.
(If you can ever emphasize to kids how you want ALL of them to earn good grades, and you’re doing things to boost their grades all the time, do it! This is one of those things I do along those lines, and I tell them it’s a great grade booster that everyone can earn easily.)
MLA formatting and citation (or APA, if that’s your course’s style) shouldn’t be a one-and-done September lesson with content that’s simply “expected” after that. These rules need to be taught explicitly, practiced, and reinforced throughout the year, the same way we’d approach any other skill we actually want students to retain. I re-teach MLA skills with every major paper, expect MLA formatting on everything students turn in, and even offer +1 extra credit for a properly formatted MLA header, even on handwritten work.
Grab my MLA lessons here! We’ve used these at my school for over ten years, updating them as MLA itself updates.
MLA Formatting Is About More Than the Paper Itself
My department chair, a woman who taught for over sixty years and was a beloved fixture in our school, used to tell students that clean MLA formatting signals something important: it tells the reader that you pay attention to detail, and that you’re willing to follow a standard even when it’s tedious. That’s a job skill, a life skill; it’s something worth teaching every student. I stole her line and now repeat it every year: start off on the right foot with your reader through crisp, professional formatting and citations, and you earn a little bubble of goodwill that shapes how they view the paper before they’ve even started reading.
Students who ignore MLA because they think “it doesn’t matter” or “the reader should just care about my ideas” are practicing a habit, and that habit is being okay with sloppiness. Great MLA formatting sets your reader up to take you seriously. It’s a first impression that can predispose a grader (or any reader) to feel positively about your work right from the first glance.
Some teachers may be skeptical, but I think there’s a real cost to skipping over MLA in high school. I hear from college-professor friends and former students that many students arrive in college having never been taught MLA formatting and citation at all. They don’t know how to set up a paper or cite, and they don’t understand why citation matters or that it’s a big deal.
It’s clear the first time a professor assigns an essay. Plenty of former students of mine end up helping their college classmates with formatting and citations because those classmates were never taught. And some of their peers even catch plagiarism accusations in college simply because no one ever taught and emphasized citing sources properly in high school. Teaching MLA clearly, early, and often is one way we protect students from being blindsided by professional-level expectations later on.
How to Teach MLA Formatting Without Losing a Week of Class Time
None of this means MLA instruction needs to eat up a week of class every time students write a paper. A tight 30-minute lesson or two near the start of the year, revisited for about 10 minutes of review before every major paper, is typically enough to ensure students remember the rules and produce work that actually follows MLA guidelines. The key is making your lessons interactive enough to stick: teach the concepts, then have students apply them, rather than lecturing once in September and never revisiting the rules.
Grab the full lesson/materials suite here!
Activities and games help reinforce what you’ve taught. I built my own MLA 9 plagiarism and citation WebQuest and an MLA formatting game, a short, easily gamified lesson where students walk through eight stages of a paper, spotting and correcting formatting errors as they go. The included materials (a how-to guide, a sample page, and the game itself) work as a first lesson for students who are brand-new to MLA, or as a fast refresher for those who just need a little reminder. I pull it out in week one, then have students keep the reference pages handy all year.
Grab my MLA Formatting Lesson, Handout, and Game here!
If you’re already dreading the “But WHY do we have to do this??” conversation, you may want to grab this easy, zero-prep citation and plagiarism Webquest. And if your students (or your English department) could use a little more consistency around MLA, you could grab the WebQuest and the formatting materials and game. But even without these activities, I hope you’ll consider teaching MLA formatting and citation with a little more attention than average.
These skills are worth real class time. Some teachers shy away from this. In fact, many do. But I find that my students genuinely appreciate knowing how to format and cite in MLA, especially once they see it helping them put their best foot forward, assist classmates in college, and avoid plagiarism trouble both now and later.
MLA isn’t hard to learn when it’s taught well. Like grammar, it behaves a little more like math than like the rest of ELA: once students know the formula, they can apply it again and again until it becomes muscle memory. Many students genuinely like that about MLA. In my classroom, it becomes an easy, reliable 10% (or +1 extra credit point) they can count on across every assignment, even handwritten ones! You can try that, too!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is MLA formatting important to teach in high school? MLA formatting teaches students a concrete, masterable skill, gives them a reliable “easy win” on writing assignments, helps them put their best foot forward on every assignment, and builds habits of attention to detail and professionalism that transfer to college coursework and the workplace.
How long does it take to teach MLA formatting? An initial lesson typically takes around 30 minutes for students new to MLA. You may wish to include a lesson like this before an assignment on which students will need to demonstrate the skill, like a formal paper with citations. After a few longer lessons early in the year, a 10-minute review before each major paper is usually enough to keep the skill fresh.
What happens if students aren’t taught MLA formatting in high school? Many American students arrive in college never having learned proper citation and formatting, which can lead to confusion, anxiety, poorer grades, the need for remediation, and in some cases, consequences for plagiarism.
Do all English teachers agree on MLA citation rules? No. MLA’s own guidance leaves room for interpretation at times — for example, many teachers argue about whether to cite after every sentence or only once per paragraph. This is why department-wide consistency and clear, explicit instruction matter so much.
Article summary: MLA formatting is often treated as a minor, fussy detail nobody really needs to care too much about, but inconsistent teaching across teachers and grade levels — and outright avoidance by some — is leaving high school students confused about citation rules and unsure whether formatting really matters. Because MLA formatting and citation are concrete, rule-based skills, they’re one of the few areas of ELA students can fully master, giving every student an achievable early win on any paper. Teaching MLA explicitly and reinforcing it before every major assignment helps students build professional habits like attention to detail, following a standard, and meeting requirements — habits that carry into college and the workplace and help prevent unintentional plagiarism issues down the road. Regular, short, interactive MLA lessons (not a one-time September mini-lecture, which is common) are typically enough to keep students consistent and confident applying MLA formatting and citation independently, before they reach college or the workforce.
Grab my FULL set of MLA 9 teaching materials here!
Article summary: MLA formatting is often treated as a minor, fussy detail nobody really needs to care too much about, but inconsistent teaching across teachers and grade levels is leaving our high school students confused about citation rules and unsure whether formatting really matters. Because MLA formatting and citation are concrete, rule-based skills, they’re one of the few areas of ELA students can fully master. This helps build student confidence and gives EVERY student an achievable early win on any paper. Teaching MLA explicitly and reinforcing it before every major assignment helps students build professional habits like attention to detail, following a standard, and meeting requirements that carry into college and the workplace, and helps prevent unintentional plagiarism issues down the road. Regular short, interactive MLA lessons (not a one-time September mini-lecture, which is common) are typically enough to remind students of MLA expectations and ensure they truly learn to apply MLA formatting and citation to their work independently before reaching college/the workforce.
Connect with Me!
- How do you teach MLA 9?
- Has teaching MLA formatting and citation been contentious in your English department? What do you and your colleagues disagree about?
- Comment below! I’d love for my readers to add to the conversation!
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Related Posts for You:
- Teach MLA Like a Pro!
- Using a Webquest to Teach Citation Skills
- MLA FAQ
- All of My MLA Teaching Materials
- Why MLA Deserves Our Attention
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- Writing Help Page
About the Author: Carly Lamp has taught English 11/English III (American Lit) for 13 years & AP Literature for 10 years. She creates thorough, thoughtful, and rigorous materials, units, and resources for high school English teachers through both her blog and her TPT store (both named English with Mrs. Lamp). She believes great teaching shouldn’t require burning yourself out!
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