Your Name
Professor's Name
Course Title (give complete title and section number--ENGL 101-6 Composition)
Date (no abbreviations here--September 14, 1999)

Title (Centered)

    Text begins here.  Notice that all the text is double spaced, with nothing anywhere in the paper single spaced at all.  Margins should be one inch, all the way around, and the font should be something simple all the way through, with no changes.  The standard is Times New Roman (in Word) in 12 point type.  You'll never get into trouble using those.  Academic style in presentation is usually pretty tame; you're not getting ahead by using fancy fonts, changing text sizes, or even using bold in the title. 

    There are several other items to consider.  You'll need a header.  In Word, you can add and edit the header by clicking on View, then Header and Footer.  You can type in the header appropriate for your paper--your last name, a space, and the automatic page numbering key (#).  Make sure it's aligned to the right.  Leave the standard format set as it is. 

    Finally, make sure that your Works Cited page is a separate page, though I encourage you to keep it part of the same file, so that it gets paginated correctly with your header on it.  It too should be double spaced, with Works Cited centered at the top of the page, and all items should be in alphabetical order with a hanging indent.

    Note: I did this style sheet in Front Page, and it shows a greater space between paragraphs than between lines of text, and more space between the title and other things than is necessary.  That's a problem you shouldn't have in Word.  All text is double-spaced.  Margins are one inch, so you'll need to change them in Word, since the default there is 1.25 inches.