MLA Heading, Header & Title Page: First-Page Format

By MLA Generator Editorial Team · Updated June 27, 2026

The MLA heading is the small block of text that opens a paper: your name, your instructor, the course, and the date, stacked in the upper-left corner of the first page. It is the first thing a reader sees and the easiest part of an MLA paper to get exactly right — once you know the four lines, the running header, and the one question everyone asks: does MLA need a title page? (Almost never.) Every rule below follows the MLA Handbook, 9th edition.

The shortest version: four flush-left lines on page one (name, instructor, course, date), a centered title under them, and your last name plus the page number in the top-right corner of every page. No title page, no bold, no underline.

The first-page heading (the four lines)

Begin one inch from the top and left edges of the first page. Type four lines, double-spaced, flush against the left margin, in the same font as the rest of the paper. Do not bold, italicize, center, or underline them.

A few details matter. The instructor line should match how your instructor styles their name — Dr. Lin, Professor Alvarez, Ms. Patel. The course line is whatever the syllabus calls the class. The date is 4 May 2026, never May 4, 2026: MLA puts the day first and uses no commas. Spell the month out in full in the heading.

This block is the heading. It appears once, at the top of page one only — it does not repeat on later pages.

The page header (last name + page number)

The header, or running head, is different from the heading and is the part students most often confuse. It sits in the upper-right corner, half an inch from the top edge, flush with the right margin, and contains your last name, one space, and the page number as an Arabic numeral:

Use your word processor’s automatic page-numbering feature so the number updates itself — typing numbers by hand invites errors when you add or cut paragraphs. The header appears on every page, including the first one (where it sits above the four-line heading) and the Works Cited page at the end. Do not add the word “page,” the abbreviation “p.,” or a comma — it is just surname, space, number.

Heading vs. header at a glance

• Heading — four lines, top-left, first page only, identifies the writer.
• Header — surname + page number, top-right, every page, labels the pages.

If you remember nothing else, remember that the heading is on the left and appears once, while the header is on the right and repeats.

The title

Below the four-line heading, drop down one double-spaced line and center the title of your paper. Use title case, and apply no special formatting — no bold, no italics, no underline, no quotation marks, and no all-caps. The only time part of a title is italicized or quoted is when it contains the title of another work, e.g., A Reading of The Great Gatsby.

Do not write “Title:” before it, and do not put a period after it. Press Enter once more and begin the first paragraph, indented half an inch, double-spaced like everything else.

A correctly formatted first page therefore reads, top to bottom: the running header in the top-right corner, then the four flush-left heading lines, then the centered title, then the body.

Does MLA need a title page?

For the overwhelming majority of MLA assignments, no. The first-page heading and centered title replace the separate title page that styles like APA use. Adding a standalone title page to a standard MLA essay is one of the most common formatting mistakes — it is not the MLA default and is frequently marked down.

A separate title page is appropriate only when your instructor requires one, which is common for group projects (so every author can be listed) or longer theses. The MLA Handbook treats the title page as an instructor-driven exception and does not prescribe a rigid layout for it, so follow whatever your assignment sheet specifies. If a title page is required, the usual practice is to omit the four-line heading from page one (its information now lives on the title page) while keeping the running header throughout. When in doubt, ask — and default to no title page, because that is what MLA expects.

Putting it together

Set the whole document to one-inch margins, double spacing, and a legible font such as 12-point Times New Roman before you type a word, and the heading falls into place. The mechanics here — heading, header, title — sit on top of the citation rules covered in the full MLA guide; once the first page is formatted you can focus on the in-text citations and the Works Cited page. If you want the citations themselves assembled automatically, the generator builds MLA 9 entries for you while you handle the page layout above.

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