A LaTeX MLA style formatter package that allows users to create MLA style documents easily.
This package comes with an installation script built for macs only. install_mla13 which can be found on github, checks your computer for a local texmf tree. If you already have one it will download and install the file along with the pdf version of its documentation. If your computer doesn't have one, it will create one for you and preceed with the downloading/installation process.
If you want to install the package manually (because you want to or you have not a mac) then just download the .sty file and place it in the texmf folder for use with all of your LaTeX file needs. If you just want to use it on one project, just place it in your project folder for local access.
The mla13 package does not require that you use any other packages, though it allows you to do so. The packages that are utilized by mla13 are: geometry, babel, csquotes, biblatex, and color. In order to use the features provided by mla13, the first thing you have to do is to use the package in your LaTeX project. To do this use the following command:
\usepackage{mla13.sty}
All MLA documents must contain the standard 5 line header that includes your name, professors name, class name, and the date the paper was written on. To do this, no formatting work is needed, the package just needs the values to be set and it will do all of the heavy lifting. To set the values of the variables follow the process below:
\firstname{Your First Name}
\lastname{Your Last Name}
\professor{Your Professor's Name}
\class{The Name of Your Class}
\title{The Title of Your Paper}
The above code simply sets all of the data values for later use in the paper. When you want to create your header, just type \makeheader and the header will be made.
Paragraph formatting is standard and coincides with the measures put in place by MLA style. The font used in Times New Roman and is of size 12. In order to change the justification of the paper, you have 3 options: (1) left justification, (2) right justification, or (3) justified. Justified is the default because that is also the default setting when using LATEX. If you would like to change the justification settings of your paper, use the following commands:
To make the file right justified use \raggedleft
To make the file left justified use \raggedright
Place either of these commands before the begin document section of your LaTeX file.
This package uses BibTeX because it is the most commonly used for bibliographies. All of your sources should be kept in a .bib file and should be formatted to meet the BibTeX standards. To learn more about BibTeX and its features, look at this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibTeX. Once your file is set up you need to tell mla13 which file to look at. To do this type the following before the begin document section of your LaTeX project:
\sources{NameOfBibFile.bib}
To cite a source, the main command that you should use is the standard cite command. This is the one that fits with MLA citation style. Here is an example of how to use this command:
No Page Number: \cite{Name of Source}
Page Number: \cite[Page]{Name of Source}
If you want to use a date other than the current date, the only way is to manually input the correctly formatted date using the standard date attribute provided by LaTeX. For example, place the following before begindocument:
\date{5 February 2013}
This follows the format of MLA such that:
\date{DAY MONTH YEAR}
Otherwise, to use the current date, do not include the date field inside of your file.
If you have any suggestions, feel free to update the files yourself, we are open to any submissions or pull requests. If you need help, feel free to contact support@jackson13.info (we respond quite quickly).