Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. When writing an essay, research paper, research proposal, thesis, or dissertation, you have to use academic style.
Use this checklist to make sure you’ve followed academic conventions in style, tone, and structure.
Continue reading: Checklist: Academic writing
When you apply for graduate school, you’ll usually be asked to submit a resume or CV along with your application. A graduate school resume should give a focused, concise overview of relevant experiences and achievements.
The exact sections you include depend on your experiences and on the focus of the program you’re applying to. Ensure your resume gives full details of:
The main difference from a regular resume is that you’ll put more emphasis on your education and academic interests to show that you’re a good candidate for graduate school.
Download the Word templates and adjust them to your own purposes.
Resume template 1 Resume Template 2
Continue reading: How to Write a Graduate School Resume | Template & Example
APA and MLA are two of the most commonly used citation styles.
APA Style Is defined in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, currently in its 7th edition.
The rules of MLA style are found in the MLA Handbook, currently in its 9th edition (published by the Modern Language Association).
In both styles, a source citation consists of:
However, citations look slightly different in each style, with different rules for things like title capitalization, author names, and placement of the date.
There are also some differences in layout and formatting. Download the Word templates for a correctly formatted paper in either style.
Continue reading: APA vs. MLA | The Key Differences in Format & Citation
When you conduct research about a group of people, it’s rarely possible to collect data from every person in that group. Instead, you select a sample. The sample is the group of individuals who will actually participate in the research.
To draw valid conclusions from your results, you have to carefully decide how you will select a sample that is representative of the group as a whole. This is called a sampling method. There are two primary types of sampling methods that you can use in your research:
You should clearly explain how you selected your sample in the methodology section of your paper or thesis, as well as how you approached minimizing research bias in your work.
Continue reading: Sampling Methods | Types, Techniques & Examples
In MLA style, the following format is used to cite a lecture or speech.
| MLA format | Speaker last name, First name. “Lecture Title.” Course or Event Name, Day Month Year, Venue, City. |
| MLA Works Cited entry | Dent, Gina. “Anchored to the Real: Black Literature in the Wake of Anthropology.” Moving Together: Activism, Art, and Education, 16 May 2018, The Black Archives, Amsterdam. |
| MLA in-text citation | (Dent) |
This format also applies to other types of oral presentation, such as a conference panel or a public talk. The format for citing PowerPoint slides is slightly different. To cite a video recording of a lecture, follow the format for citing videos, listing the speaker in the author position.
Continue reading: How to cite a lecture in MLA
MLA style requires you to cite sources using MLA in-text citations, not notes. However, you can still use footnotes or endnotes in MLA style for other purposes:
Footnotes appear at the bottom of the relevant page, while endnotes appear at the end of the paper, just before the Works Cited list. MLA allows the use of either type, but stick to one or the other.
Any sources you cite in your footnotes or endnotes must also be included in your Works Cited list, just like sources in the main text.
Continue reading: MLA footnotes and endnotes
The first page of your MLA format paper starts with a four-line left-aligned header containing:
After the header, the title of the paper is centred on a new line, in title case. The header and title do not take any special styling, and should be the same font and size as the rest of the paper.
MLA style does not require a separate title page, but one may be included if your instructor requires it or if the paper is a group project. Usually, though, the main body of your paper just starts on the same page, directly under the title.
Include your name and the page number right-aligned in the running head on every page.
MLA header template (Word) MLA header template (Google Docs)
Continue reading: Creating an MLA header
Survey research means collecting information about a group of people by asking them questions and analyzing the results. To conduct an effective survey, follow these six steps:
Surveys are a flexible method of data collection that can be used in many different types of research.
Continue reading: Survey Research | Definition, Examples & Methods
When you quote poetry, you have to properly format the quotation and the in-text citation, in order to direct the reader to the correct source entry in the Works Cited list.
Separate lines in a poetry quotation with a slash, and include the poet’s last name either in your text or in parentheses after the quote. To show the location of the quote, include line numbers (if specified in the text) or a page number (if the poem is published across multiple pages).
The second stanza begins with an ominous prophetic voice asking “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” (Eliot, lines 19–20).
In the Works Cited entry, include the full publication details of the source in which you found the poem (e.g. a book or website). You can use our free MLA citation generator to create Works Cited entries and in-text citations.
Continue reading: How to cite a poem in MLA
When citing an interview in MLA style, the name of the person being interviewed appears as the author in the in-text citation.
In the Works Cited entry, the interviewee’s name is followed by the title of the interview in quotation marks. If there is no title, use the description “Interview” (with no styling or quotation marks).
If you conducted the interview yourself, add your own name and the date on which the interview took place. If you found the interview in a published source, include the name of the interviewer and full details of the source.
| MLA Works Cited entry | MLA in-text citation | |
|---|---|---|
| Personal interview | Streefkerk, Raimo. Interview. Conducted by Shona McCombes, 20 July 2019. | (Streefkerk) |
| Published interview | Spark, Muriel. “Unsentimental Voyager.” Interview by Stephanie Merritt. The Guardian, 10 Sep. 2000, www.theguardian.com/books/2000/sep/10/fiction.murielspark. | (Spark) |
Continue reading: How to cite an interview in MLA