If you’re using MLA style for a piece of academic writing, you’ll need to make sure you format source titles correctly. But how should you write titles in MLA referencing? In this post, we explain what you need to know.
MLA style uses a form of title case for source titles. This means capitalizing:
However, you should not capitalize articles, prepositions, or coordinating conjunctions in the middle of a title. For example:
The Secret of Success: How to Achieve Your Goals Quickly
After the Storm: Why the Weather Is Changing
Are Dogs People? Animal Psychology and Personhood
The one exception is untitled sources! For a poem with no title or a social media message, for instance, you would quote the first few words in place of a title. And, in this case, you would use the same capitalization as shown in the source you’re quoting. For example:
In Iqbal’s 2014 poem “The colours and the sound,” she examines…
For all other English-language sources, though, make sure to use title case.
Most source titles in MLA are either italicized or placed in quote marks:
For example, we’d italicize Scientific American (i.e., the title of a magazine). But we’d put the title of an article from this magazine in quote marks:
Published in Scientific American in September 2020, the article “Water on Mars: Discovery of Three Buried Lakes Intrigues Scientists” (O’Callaghan 14) generated new interest in the question of whether life ever existed on Mars. In particular, it raised the question of…
However, there are some exceptions to the rules above! In MLA style, titles of the following should be written without either italics or quote marks:
Keep an eye out for these types of titles in your writing.