My English 101 professor insists on MLA 9 for a 1200‑word argumentative essay—am I missing any hidden formatting tricks?

You’re not missing any secret MLA tricks—what your professor wants is just the standard MLA 9 format, but with a couple of practical constraints that you can meet without chopping sources or fiddling with margins too much. First, make sure your document is set to 1‑inch margins all around, 12‑point Times New Roman (or another approved font), and double‑spaced throughout, including the Works‑Cited. In MLA the Works‑Cited itself is double‑spaced, but you don’t need an extra blank line between entries, and the first line of each entry is flush left while subsequent lines are indented a half‑inch (a hanging indent). When you apply those settings correctly, most bibliographies for a 1200‑word essay will fit on a single page. If your Works‑Cited still spills onto a second page, try these quick fixes: combine any entries that refer to the same source (e.g., multiple citations of the same book or article can be merged into one entry with all the relevant page numbers), and double‑check that you haven’t included unnecessary details like “Retrieved from” URLs for print sources. Also, avoid extra spacing before or after paragraphs—MLA wants no extra space before or after the Works‑Cited heading. If you’ve done all that and it’s still a bit long, you can slightly reduce the font size of the Works‑Cited to 11 pt (still readable) or shrink the line spacing to 1.5 for that page only, which is generally acceptable as long as the rest of the paper stays double‑spaced. Bottom line: stick to the standard MLA layout, use hanging indents, merge duplicate sources, and trim any unnecessary blank space—your bibliography will likely shrink to one page without losing any citations, and you’ll meet the professor’s exact word‑count and formatting requirements. Good luck, you’ve got this!