MLA stands for Modern Language Association. This is a professional organization for scholars of language and literature.
But why does this group of people have so much influence on the appearance of papers you write in college?
The MLA, like many other academic organizations, publishes a scholarly journal and has done so for decades. In years before computers were common, the editors of this journal required typed submissions for publication to follow a common formatting template.
Professors who were following this format to write their own work recognized the value of having some standard of uniform appearance. They started asking their students to follow the same format when they typed essays for class projects.
Fast forward to now, and we have a thick set of guidelines for how the first page of an essay should look, what margins and font are appropriate, and what a Works Cited entry for a blog post should look like.
The ultimate goal for MLA formatting and citation standards is so that everyone has a common template to draw from. While they may feel like unbreakable rules, it’s helpful to remember that they were created to serve a common need, with your interests in mind.
This answer was written by Lumen Learning and is available from Why is MLA Documentation Important?