You also use quotation marks for the titles of short stories. For example, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver or “Coyotes” by Jo Ann Beard. This rule also applies to the title of an essay. For example, “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.
For example, if you are citing a chapter title in Moby Dick, you would cite it as “The Carpet-Bag” chapter in Moby Dick. If you are citing an article title in a travel journal, it would appear as “Rivers of China” or “Top Hikes in Oregon”. A newspaper article title would appear as “Woman Missing on Hiking Trail”.
You should also use quotations for the title of a skit or a monologue. For example, “The Bar Skit”.
If you have any unpublished works that you are titling, such as manuscripts, speeches, lectures, dissertations, or theses, you should use quotation marks. For example, “My Speech on Human Rights” or “A Lecture on Bees”.
In your references or bibliography, you would use plain text for the titles of shorter works, with no quotation marks. For example, Breaking the Psyche in Adolescents.
Story collections and poetry collections are also notated with italics. For example, The Collected Stories of Grace Paley or The Collected Poetry of Dorothy Parker. An anthology of essays is also italicized. For example, The Best American Essays.
The titles of encyclopedias are also italicized. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica or The Encyclopedia of Botanicals.
The titles of television series or shows as a whole should be italicized. For example, Friends or The Mindy Project.
Check with your professor or teacher about her preference for underlying or italics before you format titles in a paper or an assignment so you do not get docked points due to formatting errors. If your professor does want you to use underlining instead of italics, follow the same steps above using underlining instead of italics. [17] X Research source
You must capitalize the first and last word in the title as well as every noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. For example, the title “poem about a happy day” would appear as “Poem about a Happy Day. ” Do not use all capitals to format the title, for example, “MOBY DICK”. Instead, only capitalize the first letter of each word, for example, “Moby Dick”.
In APA style, you also only capitalize the first word of any subtitles in the title. For example, “The wise man on the mountain: A true story”.
For example, the title “wise man on the mountain” would appear as: “Wise Man on the Mountain. ” The exception to this rule is if the title begins with a preposition or article. The preposition or article would be capitalized in this case. For example, the title “the sound and the fury” would appear as: “The Sound and the Fury. ”[21] X Research source
You should also make sure you capitalize any names of persons or key historical events in a title. This could be a well known cultural or political figure, or the name of a historical event. For example, the title “The ramifications of Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution” would appear as: “The Ramifications of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution”.
When in doubt, more capitalization is better than too little capitalization. You can also look up the title if it already exists in print and check to see how the author or publisher capitalizes the title.
