The material below is very basic and is common to all school writing. With the exception of the APA "References" page (which has some very unusual capitalization rules), you can use this material in almost everything you write. Whether you are formatting a Works Cited page or putting a reference in the text of your paper, these rules apply.
Rules for capitalization of titles are strict, but they are easy to follow. It does not matter if a book designer has decided to put everything in capital letters, everything in lower-case, or to do some other design element—just follow the rules below.
Do not capitalize these words when they fall in the middle of the title:
(By the way, word processors do not know this list. If you ask them to "Change Case" and specify "Title Case," everything gets an initial capital.)
Use a colon and a space to separate the title from the subtitle unless the title ends in a question mark, exclamation point, or dash. Include other punctuation marks only if they are part of the title.
Do not use boldface to indicate a title.
Italicize the titles of works published independently: books, plays, long poems published as books, pamphlets, periodicals (newspapers, magazines, and journals), films, radio and television programs, CDs and other recordings, ballets, operas, other long musical compositions that have actual names (not pieces simply identified by form, number, and key: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony), paintings, works of sculpture, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft.
Until recently, underlining was an acceptable alternative to italics, but that standard changed in 2009. Unless you are typing with a mechanical typewriter that cannot change font, italicize the titles of longer works. You will occasionally see older resources that haven't been updated suggesting underlining—just ignore that part and italicize your titles.
Enclose a title in double quotation marks (but without underlining, boldface, or italics) if it was published as within a larger work: articles, essays, short stories, short poems, chapters of books, individual episodes of television programs, and short musical compositions (for example, songs). Also use quotation marks for unpublished works such as lectures and speeches.
It looks like a quotation, but it's just the name of something, so we don't put a comma before it. In a quotation, the comma comes after a "speaking verb" (Note: there's no comma before "speaking verb" in this sentence because the word "a" isn't saying that someone said something).
Do punctuate direct quotations this way:
George said, "I love you, Martha."
Do not punctuate the title of a short story or poem this way:
Harper's Magazine published, "Barn Burning" in 1938. The same magazine had earlier published, "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost.
Both of those commas are wrong because "Barn Burning" and "Fire and Ice" are not quotations and "published" doesn't count as a speaking verb. They are simply titles with quote marks to show that they aren't book-length works.
We do not use italics or quotation marks on the names of:
Books: Generally, your best source for an accurate title is the title page of the book. Library databases sometimes abbreviate or introduce errors. Dust jackets introduce their own problems, especially when the book has a subtitle, so go with the title page.
Internet pages: It's great when a web page has its title up in the title bar at the top of your screen. Use that if it works. If not, look at the top of the page itself. Web pages, though, are often put together by amateurs, and often have a very complex relationship between the home page and the subordinate pages. Things get even more complex when you are citing a book or article that previously appeared in print and is now on the Web.
The word "magazine" isn't part of the title of Time, Newsweek, or National Geographic, so don't give it any special treatment. In the text, you might write, "According to an article in Time magazine." In the Works Cited reference, the word "magazine" wouldn't appear at all. On the other hand, the Journal of the American Medical Association calls itself by that full name, so that's the way you should cite it.
We often include the name of the publisher's city when we refer informally to a newspaper, but not all newspapers include city in their official name. City name is part of the official title of The New York Times and The Washington Post. In my home town we have a newspaper that we commonly call "The Mansfield News Journal." Its official name, however, is simply The News Journal. That's how you should refer to it and cite it.
If you use a long, cumbersome title often in your text, it's acceptable to shorten it. The first time, use the full title (and make sure the full title is on your Works Cited page). After that, you can use a non-ambiguous abbreviation. For example, a paper comparing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire could simply refer to them as Phoenix and Goblet after an initial reference has established the names.
The title of your paper is printed in the same type and style as the body. It's not underlined, italicized, bold, or all capitals. Simply follow the instructions above for capitalization and center the title horizontally. Do not put quotation marks around the title of your paper.
Microsoft Word is too fancy. If you use their "Heading 1" style, it's larger, flush left, blue, and even a different type face. Microsoft's "Title" style goes even further. It's twice as big and underlined. Very fancy, but inappropriate for a college paper. Simply use the same type size and face as your paper and center the title without any further typographic design.
This material depends heavily on:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 2003. Pages 102-09.