The Modern Language Association (http://www.mla.org http://www.mla.org) is the main scholarly society for the study of literature in modern languages (including

The Modern Language Association (http://www.mla.org http://www.mla.org) is the main scholarly society for the study of literature in modern languages (including English) in North America. "MLA Style" is one of several styles used in scholarly publishing in the humanities, and its citation format is often taught in schools. Old editions of the manual did talk about margins and pages; newer editions make far fewer assumptions about your medium (though it assumes you are going to be often -- though not exclusively -- citing physical books and media in your work). It's been years since a publisher gave me a "page count" in their guidelines; word count is nearly universal. I stopped assigning page counts to students around the time that the publishers stopped (a long time ago at this point), and I think most of my colleagues did the same. So I'm not sure what kerning and em-size wizardry really does for you, unless your professor is pretty old school (and hasn't bought a new edition of the MLA Handbook since the Clinton administration).