Everything You Need To Know About The Term Paper Cover Page Format

Creating a cover page for your term paper is a very important step. A title page is the face of your paper, so if it looks bad, you won’t make a good impression on your teacher and other readers. Your cover page will be different depending on the formatting style stated in your assignment guidelines. In this article, you may learn how to craft a cover page for a paper in the APA and MLA format.

In both cases, your text should be double-spaced and you should use 12pt Times New Roman font. Margins should be set one inch on all sides.

MLA

  1. Place your title in the center one-third of the way down the cover page. Capitalize the first letter of each word in a title with the exception of articles and prepositions. Don’t underline or italicize your title. If a title contains a quote, it should be within quotation marks. If a title contains the name of a book, for example, it should be written in italics.
  2. Leave two or three lines of space and write your name.
  3. Leave a few lines again and write the course and class information.
  4. On the next line, write the name of instructor including their title (Dr. John Smith).
  5. On the next line, write the date in a European style (3 March 2015)

APA

  1. Your title should be center aligned and placed halfway down the cover page. Use the same rules as with the MLA style when it comes to capitalization and other details.
  2. Almost at the bottom of the page, you should write your name.
  3. On the next line, you should write your instructor’s name, including their title.
  4. On the next line, you should write the name of your university.
  5. On the next line, you should write the date of submission.
  6. Create the running head. This is a shortened version of your title. It should be left justified and contain no more than fifty characters. This header should be at the top of each page of your term paper.
  7. Create the page number using the same header function as for the running head. The page number should be right aligned and separated from the running head by five or seven spaces.

These are the basic rules for creating cover pages for MLA and APA papers. Make sure to consult your instructor, though. Your college or university may have their own additional requirements.