Language and content are the important basis for judging the quality of an English paper. However, whether the writing format is standardized is also a measure that cannot be ignored. Therefore, it is of great significance to standardize the format of English papers and make them conform to international academic practices for our English teaching, writing English papers and promoting international academic exchanges. Because the writing norms of English papers vary from subject to subject, this paper intends to summarize the writing norms of humanistic English papers in American education and academic circles for readers' reference and imitation.

First, the title of the English paper.

A long English thesis (such as English graduation thesis) usually needs a title page, and its writing format is as follows: the distance between the first line title and the top of the printing paper is about one third of the total length of the printing paper, the distance between the first line title and the next line (usually in the center) is 5cm, and the third and fourth lines are the author's name and date (both in the center) respectively. If the English thesis is written by a student for a course, the academic title and name of the teacher (such as Dr/Professor C Prager) and the number or name of the course (such as English 734 or English novel) should be marked between the author's name and date. When printing, if there is no special requirement, each line should be double-spaced, that is, interlaced printing, with a line spacing of about 0.6cm (the line spacing of other parts of the paper is the same).

As far as students are concerned, if English papers are short, they can also type the contents of the title page in the upper left of the first page of the text instead of making the title page (and outline page). The first line is the author's name, about 2.5cm from the top of the printing paper. The following lines are the teacher's title and surname, course number (or name) and date in turn; The left side of each row is aligned up and down, leaving a margin of about 2.5cm (the same below). Then there is the title and body of the paper (between the date and the title, between the title and the first line of the body, you only need to print alternately, without leaving more blanks).

Second, the English paper outline

The English paper outline page includes the topic sentence and the outline itself, and its standard format is as follows: type the word Thesis and colon at the beginning of the first line (still about 2.5cm from the top of the printing paper), then type the topic sentence after leaving a space, and the left side should be aligned with the first letter of the topic sentence when returning. The main outline is marked with capital Roman numerals, and the secondary outline is marked with capital English letters, Arabic numerals and lowercase English letters in turn. Add a dot after each number or letter, and type the first letter of the content with a blank space; The top, bottom and left sides of the same level of contour must be aligned. It should be noted that there must be more than two equally important programs, that is, I should have II, A should have B, and so on. If the outline of an English paper is long and needs two pages, the page number of the second page must be marked with lowercase Roman numerals in the upper right corner, that is, ii (the first page does not need to be numbered).

Third, the text of English papers

For English papers with title page and outline page, the standard format of the first page of the text is: the title of the paper is centered, about 5cm from the top of the printing paper and about 1.5cm from the first line of the text. The first letter of a paragraph must be indented by five spaces, that is, starting from the sixth space. The first page of the text does not need to be numbered (but the page number should be calculated). Starting from the second page, the author's surname must be indicated in the upper right corner of each page (that is, the first line at the back is vacant), and the page number should be indicated with Arabic numerals after a space is vacant; Arabic numeral (or its last digit) should be the last space in the line. Pay attention to the printing format of punctuation marks when printing the text, that is, leave two spaces after the end of the sentence (period, question mark and exclamation point) and one space after other punctuation marks.

Four. Quotations in English papers

It is an important link in writing English papers to quote the original works or the opinions of experts and scholars correctly. We should not only pay attention to the organic unity of citation and paper, that is, its logic, but also pay attention to the standardization of citation format (that is, English paper references). Quote other people's opinions, either directly or indirectly. In any case, the author of the paper must indicate the author and source of the quoted text. At present, the common practice in American academic circles is to indicate the author and source of the quotation in brackets after the quotation. According to the different situations cited in this paper, some standard formats are described as follows.

1. If the citation is less than three lines, the citation can be organically integrated into the paper. For example:

The separation of Arnold's personal desires from his legacy led to "a familiar picture of Victorian people living alone in a strange universe" (Roper 9).

Here, the Roper in brackets is the last name of the author of the citation (full name is not required); Arabic numerals are the page numbers of quotations (don't write P.9); There should be a space between the author's surname and the page number, but punctuation is not needed; The period should be placed after the second parenthesis.

2. If the cited text exceeds three lines, the citation should be separated from the text of the paper, as shown in the following example:

Whitman has proved himself to be an outstanding representative and pioneer of the Democratic Party and his "democratic prospect".

Is admirable and distinctive.

Abuse. If a person feels sorry

Whitman can't imagine

Extreme social crisis, that's for sure.

No society can tolerate it.

Citizens can't find refreshments.

Optimistic democratic idealism. (Datong 165)

There are two points to note in the format here. First, the first letter on the left of an English paper has ten spaces, and the spacing is different, that is, it should be typed from the eleventh box; Second, quotation does not need quotation marks, and the ending period should be marked after the last word.

3. If you need to insert notes in the quotation to explain some words, you should use square brackets (not parentheses). For example:

Dr. Beaman pointed out that "he (Charles Darwin) is an important factor in the debate between evolution and biblical creationism" (9).

It is worth noting that in this case, the surname of the author of the quotation has already appeared in the leading sentence, so it is only necessary to indicate the page number of the quotation in brackets.

4. If there are words irrelevant to the paper that need to be deleted from the text to be quoted, you need to use ellipsis. If ellipsis appears in quotation marks, use three points, if it appears at the end of quotation marks, use four points, and the last point indicates a period, and put it after the second parenthesis (generally speaking, ellipsis should be avoided at the beginning of quotation marks); There should be a space between dots and letters, or between dots. For example:

Mary shelley hated tyranny, and "regarded the poor as poor victims of the social system, and regarded the rich and people of noble birth as victims" ... with undisguised contempt and contempt ... (Nietzsche 43).

5. If the quotation comes from multiple volumes, in addition to the volume number, the author's surname and page number should also be indicated. For example:

Professor's History of English Literature aims to provide China readers with a "historical overview from the earliest English literature to the 20th century English literature" (Chen, 1:i).

1 in brackets is the volume number, and the lowercase Roman numeral I is the page number, indicating that the quotation comes from the preface of 1 volume (preface, preface, introduction, etc. Page numbers are mostly expressed in lowercase Roman numerals). In addition, the history of English literature is underlined; The standard format is: the title of the book, including the title of the work published in the form of a book (such as Paradise Lost), must be underlined or italicized; The titles of other works, such as poems, essays, short stories, etc., are all marked with double quotes, such as "To Autumn" and the previous "Democratic Prospect".

6. If an English paper quotes two or more works by the same author, it should indicate the author, the page number of the citation and the name of the work. For example:

Bacon condemned Prato as an "obstacle to science" (Farrington, Philosophy 35).

Farrington pointed out that Aristotle's father Nico Marcos is a physician, and he may train his son to engage in medicine (Aristotle 15).

These two examples quoted two works by Farrington respectively, so the titles of the cited books are marked in their own brackets to avoid confusion. The names of the two books are abbreviations (if the titles are too long, they should also be abbreviated when indicated in brackets), and the full names are Founder of Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Francis Bacon and Aristotle.

7. Commenting on poetry often needs to quote the original poem. The quotation format is shown in the following example.

When Beowulf dived up to the surface of the water, "rough waves and large areas of water/were washed away ..." (1.1620-21).

The poems quoted here are separated by slashes, and there must be spaces between slashes and letters and punctuation marks before and after; 1 in brackets is the abbreviation of line; 2 1 need not be written as 162 1. If the quoted poem exceeds three lines, it is still necessary to separate the quoted poem from the main body of the paper (see item 4, point 2).