The Three Letters That Rule My Life

            MLA. These Three simple letters have dictated a large amount of my career as a student, but the truth of the matter is I do not know why. Since I was in about sixth grade I was given this rubric for how my writing should be, black ink, 1 inch margins, double space, name and page number in the header, and a proper heading. It was never really explained to me why everything had to be like this, in fact the more I think about it the more I feel like a citizen in George Orwell’s 1984, blindly following the bland style that I was told I should.

            When I was first asked why my papers looked like this, why they were in this format, my mind went back to my junior year English teacher. I waned to write her a letter telling her that, although she made sure we knew how to write in MLA format, she never told us why we did it, and because of that she should write this explanation for me. However I realized that my letter would most likely go unanswered, so I started to honestly think about it.

            I believe the most logical reason that we are taught to write in this form is so that papers can be uniform. It’s easier to grade a paper if there’s a rubric to it, if there is a set up that is ordered and logical. It may feel like a bit of brain washing. But writing in This MLA format makes it easier for our errors to be critiqued. In one standard form we know what is expected, and we can build off of that, and work on the flaws in our writing while still having something to lean on. So although I still cannot tell you exactly why I write in the format that I write in, I can tell you that there is logic in writing in a standard format. It gives us something to work off of and learn with.