Recently, on the first of March, the National Federation of English Specialists (NFES) held their first convention of the century. The NFES, which meets once every 25 years, decided to address several different concerns, such as the influx of requests about the differentiations between different commas, such as the Oxford comma. Another important topic was MLA formatting. Over the past few years, the NFES has received many complaints about the accessibility and difficulty of MLA formatting. In the convention, the NFES has officially decided to change MLA rules, in hopes of making it simpler and more achievable for students.
The font will no longer be Times New Roman, but instead Comic Sans, and the font size should be 14. Parenthetical citations are no longer important unless you are specifically quoting from the text. Otherwise, it is assumed you are paraphrasing. Headings will also be changed. First, you should no longer address your teacher as “Mr.” or “Ms.” Instead, they should be addressed as “King” or “Queen”. You also do not need to list the subject anymore in your header, and the date should be written in order of: month, day, year. Line spacing should not be 2x, but instead simply 1.5x. Titles can also be anything, even if unrelated to the paper. Finally, the NFES has declared that citations are now optional. While some English teachers may prefer the citation, you may simply include the link to the original source material at the end of the paper. The link should be accompanied by the day you interacted with the material and the author of the source.
The NFES’ decision about MLA standards was while unexpected, an important one to be made. Should we continue to change the conventional ideals, or should we leave them as is? Although the MLA standards are drastically different, perhaps other standards don’t need this kind of tweaking. For more information on the changes and their impact, I would recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ .
As this month continues, remember to start implementing these changes in your work! Although the NFES has alerted people that these changes are drastic, they should begin to be used in papers starting on April 1st. Good luck!