what do you do to movie titles in writing
MLA Titles | How to Format & Capitalize Source Titles
In MLA style, source titles appear either in italics or in quotation marks:
- Italicize the title of a self-contained whole (e.g. a book, film, journal, or website).
- Usequotation marks around the title if it is part of a larger piece of work (eastward.g. a chapter of a book, an article in a journal, or a page on a website).
All major words in a title are capitalized. The same format is used in the Works Cited list and in the text itself.
Identify in quotation marks | Italicize |
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When you use the Scribbr MLA Citation Generator, the correct formatting and capitalization are automatically practical to titles.
Capitalization in MLA titles
In all titles and subtitles, capitalize the first and terminal words, as well as any other primary words.
What to capitalize
Part of oral communication | Example |
---|---|
Nouns | A Contraction in Time |
Pronouns | The Error in Our Stars |
Verbs | Man's Search for Pregnant |
Adjectives | The Diary of a Young Girl |
Adverbs | The Cursory Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao |
Subordinating conjunctions | Black Like Me |
What not to capitalize
Part of speech | Example |
---|---|
Manufactures (a, an, the) | On the Road |
Prepositions (against, as, between, of, to) | Out of Africa |
Coordinating conjunctions (and, merely, for, nor, or, so, yet) | Charlie and the Chocolate Mill |
"To" in infinitives | Born to Run |
Punctuation in MLA titles
Use the same punctuation as appears in the source title. However, if in that location is a subtitle, separate it from the main championship with a colon and a infinite, even if different (or no) punctuation is used in the source.
Instance of a work with a subtitle
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The exception is when the title ends in a question marker, exclamation point or dash, in which case you keep the original punctuation:
When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864
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Titles within titles
Sometimes a championship contains another title—for example, the title of an article well-nigh a novel might incorporate that novel's title.
For titles within titles, in general, maintain the aforementioned formatting equally you would if the title stood on its own.
Type of title | Format | Case |
---|---|---|
Longer works within shorter works | Italicize the inner work's title | The Great Gatsby → " The Smashing Gatsby and the Cacophony of the American Dream" |
Shorter works inside shorter works | Employ unmarried quotation marks for the inner title | "The Red Wedding" → "'The Red Wedding' at v: Why Game of Thrones Well-nigh Notorious Scene Shocked Us to the Core" |
Shorter works inside longer works | Enclose the inner championship in quotation marks, and italicize the unabridged title | "The Garden Political party" → "The Garden Party" & Other Stories |
Longer works within longer works | Remove the italicization from the inner title | Richard II and Henry V → Shakespeare'southward History Plays: Richard II to Henry V , the Making of a King |
Exceptions to MLA championship formatting
Titles and names that autumn into the post-obit categories are not italicized or enclosed in quotation marks:
- Scripture (east.g. the Bible, the Koran, the Gospel)
- Laws, acts and related documents (e.thou. the Announcement of Independence, the Constitution, the Paris Agreement)
- Musical compositions identified by course, number and key (due east.thousand. Beethoven'due south Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67)
- Conferences, seminars, workshops and courses (eastward.g. MLA Annual Convention)
Sections of a work
Words that indicate a particular section of a work are not italicized or placed within quotation marks. They are also not capitalized when mentioned in the text.
Examples of such sections include:
- preface
- introduction
- list of works cited
- appendix
- scene
- stanza
- chapter
- bibliography
- act
- index
Introductions, prefaces, forewords and afterwords
Descriptive terms such as "introduction", "preface", "foreword" and "afterword" are capitalized if mentioned in an in-text citation or in the Works Cited list, but not when mentioned in the text itself.
Example of descriptive term capitalization
In-text citation:
(Brontë, Preface)
In text:
In her preface to the work, added in a later edition, Brontë debates the morality of creating characters such as those featured in Wuthering Heights.
If there is a unique championship for the introduction, preface, foreword or afterword, include that title in quotation marks instead of the generic department name when referencing the source in the Works Cited listing or an in-text citation.
Sources with no title
For sources with no title, a brief clarification of the source acts as the title.
Example of a source reference with no title
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie. Chair of stained oak. 1897-1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Follow these rules for capitalization:
- Capitalize the offset give-and-take
- Capitalize proper nouns
- Ignore other MLA rules for capitalization
There are some exceptions to this general format: descriptions including titles of other works, such as comments on articles or reviews of movies; untitled curt messages, similar tweets; electronic mail messages; and untitled poems.
Exceptions to full general format for sources with no title
Source type | Rules | Example |
---|---|---|
Comment/review of a work |
| Sam. Comment on "The Patriot'due south Guide to Election Fraud." The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2019, world wide web.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/opinion |
Tweet or other curt untitled message |
| @realDonaldTrump. "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. Keep AMERICA GREAT!" Twitter, 24 Mar. 2019, 1:42 p.m., twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status |
| Labrode, Molly. "Re: National Cleanup Day." Received by Courtney Gahan, twenty Mar. 2019. | |
Untitled poem |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "O! there are spirits of the air." The Major Works, edited by Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill, Oxford Upwardly, 2003, pp. 89–90. |
Abbreviating titles
If you lot need to mention the name of a work in the text itself, land the full title, but omit the subtitle.
If you lot need to refer to the piece of work multiple times, you may shorten the championship to something familiar or obvious to the reader. For instance, Huckleberry Finn for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . If in incertitude, adopt the noun phrase.
If the standalone abbreviation may not be clear, you can innovate it in parentheses, post-obit the standard guidelines for abbreviations. For instance, The Merchant of Venice (MV). For Shakespeare and the Bible, in that location are well-established abbreviations you can use.
When you abbreviate a title, make sure you keep the formatting consistent. Even if the abridgement consists only of letters, as in the MV example, it must be italicized or placed within quotation marks in the aforementioned way as it would be when written in full.
Abbreviating very long titles in the Works Cited list
Titles should unremarkably be given in full in the Works Cited list, but if any of your sources has a particularly long title (often the case with older works), you can utilise an ellipsis to shorten it here. This is merely necessary with extremely long titles such as the case below.
Titles in foreign languages
In the Works Cited list, if you lot are listing a work with a title in a language other than English, you can add the translated title in square brackets.
Example of a reference with a translated championship
Coelho, Paulo. O Alquimista [The Alchemist]. Benvirá Publishing, 1988.
If you are using the foreign-language title in the text itself, you lot can besides include the translation in parenthesis. For example, O Alquimista (The Alchemist).
You don't need to include a translation in your reference listing or in the text if yous wait your readers to exist familiar with the original language. For case, you wouldn't translate the title of a French novel you were writing near in the context of a French degree.
Non-Latin script languages
For works in a language that does not use the Latin alphabet, such as Standard arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, or Russian, exist consistent with how you mention the source titles and also quotations from inside them.
For example, if you choose to write a Russian title in the Cyrillic course, do that throughout the document. If you cull to employ the Romanized grade, stick with that. Do not alternate between the two.
Frequently asked questions almost MLA titles
- How do you write a volume title in MLA?
-
In MLA style, book titles appear in italics, with all major words capitalized. If there is a subtitle, carve up information technology from the primary title with a colon and a space (even if no colon appears in the source). For case:
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The format is the same in the Works Cited list and in the text itself. However, when you mention the book championship in the text, y'all don't have to include the subtitle.
The title of a part of a book—such as a chapter, or a short story or poem in a collection—is non italicized, simply instead placed in quotation marks.
- When should I cite a chapter instead of the whole book?
-
When a volume'due south chapters are written by different authors, you should cite the specific chapter you are referring to.
When all the chapters are written by the same author (or group of authors), you should usually cite the unabridged book, but some styles include exceptions to this.
- In APA Style, single-author books should always be cited as a whole, even if yous only quote or paraphrase from one affiliate.
- In MLA Manner, if a single-author book is a collection of stand-alone works (e.g. short stories), you should cite the individual work.
- In Chicago Style, you lot may choose to cite a single chapter of a single-author book if you feel information technology is more appropriate than citing the whole book.
- Are commodity titles italicized in MLA?
-
The title of an article is not italicized in MLA fashion, only placed in quotation marks. This applies to articles from journals, newspapers, websites, or whatsoever other publication. Use italics for the title of the source where the article was published. For example:
"A Complete Guide to MLA Citation" is published on theScribbr website.
Use the aforementioned formatting in the Works Cited entry and when referring to the article in the text itself.
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