Basic Research Paper
Use this template for a basic student research paper in MLA style. Click on a link to view and/or download the template. Please note that .doc files will contain handy, shaded, click-to-replace fields around things like the the title and date. These fields don’t show up in the Dropbox document viewer, but they’ll be there when you download the file.
.doc Template for Microsoft Word (view or download)
.doc Template for Microsoft Word (quick download)
.odt Template for Open Office Writer (quick download)
Template for Google Docs (links to Google Docs; you may need to sign in with a Google account)
EZ Docs 
Dale, I have been studying your templates for use with high school students who are writing term papers and begrudging every minute of the process. We are fairly poor and Illinois doesn’t pay its bills, so we have been trying to equalize the playing field by using Google Docs. The English teacher is leary or wary of students working online, but is trying to be a sport and humor me.
Students are having problems with the 1/2 inch top header & page number while leaving with the one inch first line. I was working with your template on a Mac using Google CHROME & Google Docs and the header popped right up in the correct 1/2 inch spot.
Yelling Eureka! I hurried to show off for Mrs. Dawe. Oh My, no headers popped up on Internet Explorer or Firefox using PCs! What the #$%!
Oh, please tell me there is a simple solution without having to download Chrome to 75 computers. We are stuck with the PCs, also. I tried using the template from your website and Google templates but that didn’t matter either.
Hope you love a good riddle! Thank you for listening and hopefully replying.
Jane Richey librarian
Hmmm… a riddle indeed. I am using FireFox 16 on a PC, and the header is showing up fine.
The first thing I would try is making sure that you are viewing the Google Doc in paginated mode. To select paginated mode, select View -> Document View -> Paginated.
Did it work?
If not, try viewing a print preview of the document. (File -> Print Preview.) Print preview won’t help you or your students to edit the header for your papers, but it should at least tell you whether or not the header is there. If the header is completely missing for some reason, then we can work on inserting a new header. If the header shows up on the print preview but does NOT show up any other time, then I will be genuinely baffled–but we can still trouble-shoot from there 🙂