How to Write a Book Title in an Essay MLA

A guide to formatting, capitalizing, and punctuating book titles in MLA style.

In literature, there are sets of rules for almost every section of writing. There is even a guideline for mentioning book titles in your essays or research papers. Writing book titles in MLA format is a common practice in the literary world, as it makes citations easier for instructors to read and understand.

About MLA Format

The Modern Language Association is a professional union of teachers and scholars who promote the study of literature and language. The MLA handbook provides the book-title format that is now used in academic papers for citations. This format also comes in handy whenever you refer to a book title elsewhere in your essay.

Formatting Book Titles in an Essay MLA

Formatting book titles in MLA relies on one general rule: italicizing. To make a book title appear distinct, MLA requires you to use specific formatting. Follow the instructions below to make your paper comply with the standard.

Distinguish the book title from the rest of the text by writing the complete title in italics. The same approach applies to music albums and film titles.

Example García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is a reflection of his first-hand experiences growing up in Colombia.

Book titles are not always italicized in MLA. When there is a book title within the title of the book you are mentioning, keep the secondary title in a regular font, contrary to the main one.

Example In The Great Gatsby in the Classroom: Searching for the American Dream, David Dowling shows how teachers can help students connect The Great Gatsby with today's social system.

If the work is not a single-volume edition, MLA allows italicizing the series name. The title is italicized if it appears in every volume of the series, such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

When you mention a book title for the second or third time in your essay, you need not write it out in full. You can use an abbreviation of the title, or a part of it that clearly refers readers back to the book. Remember to italicize the abbreviation too.

Example When writing about The Call of the Wild by Jack London, you can later refer to the book simply as The Call, still following the italicizing rule.

Capitalizing Book Titles in an Essay MLA

The second rule concerns capitalization. Capitalization signals the beginning of a sentence, a title, important words, or proper nouns. MLA also uses capitalization to communicate that a phrase is the name of a book.

As in basic grammar, MLA instructs you to capitalize the first letter of the first word of the title.

Example In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Even though "in" is a preposition, it must be capitalized here because it is the first word.

Along with the first word, all other words in the title should be capitalized, with some exceptions.

Example The title of Aldous Huxley's science-fiction novel Brave New World is derived from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The exception allows an article, preposition, or coordinating conjunction (and, or, but, etc.) to be written in lowercase if it appears anywhere other than the first position of the title.

Example The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Here, "in" and "the" are a preposition and an article respectively, hence the lowercase.

When subordinating conjunctions are used, they should be capitalized like the rest of the words in the title.

Example The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore is a poem based on the coming of St. Nicholas to give gifts to children.

Punctuating Book Titles in an Essay MLA

Punctuation plays a vital role in conveying the exact message or argument in an essay, and the same holds true for book titles in MLA. Here are some rules of thumb for punctuating them.

The punctuation used in the original title should not be removed in your citation. If there is a question mark or an exclamation mark at the end of a book title, you must include it in your write-up too, even if the punctuation is grammatically incorrect.

Example The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch takes you through a person's journey toward becoming a virtuous, spiritually mature human being.

Be sure to italicize the punctuation mark at the end of the title to make clear that it is part of the title.

Example The play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee is the story of a caring couple transforming into cynical enemies.

If a title has a subtitle, separate the subtitle from the title with a colon and a space.

Example Storytelling and Mythmaking: Images from Film and Literature.

If the book title ends with a question or exclamation mark, you do not follow it with a colon (Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Language) — except when the title includes another book title within it. In that case, a colon does follow the punctuation mark.

If a title ends with a dash or ellipsis, place a comma after the title so readers realize that the ellipsis or dash is part of the title itself.

Example The famous Shakespearean actor Kelsey Grammer, in his autobiography So Far…, lets you see Kelsey as a normal man with blessings and a journey of trials that shape his destiny.

This article covers the core guidelines for writing book titles in MLA format. For anything not addressed here, refer to the official MLA handbook.