How do you format a book title in an essay

When you’re writing a scholarly article or writing in a professional setting, you want to make sure that your grammar and style is meeting the required expectations. There may be a chance you’re writing about a book you’ve read or citing sources in a research paper. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering things like, “Do you italicize book titles or underline them?” or “How do I cite shorter pieces of work properly?” then keep on reading!

We are going to give you all the details on when it’s correct to use italics, along with how to emphasize other types of reference material.

The general rule of thumb is to use italics for long works and quotations for short work.

But depending on the format you’re meant to adhere by, the rules may vary. For example, you may be instructed to write according to the APA style, MLA, or Chicago Manual of Style. You should follow the rules dictated by the guidelines.

Writing Formats

• Modern Language Association (MLA): Used in arts and humanities
• American Psychological Association (APA): Used in social sciences
• Associated Press Stylebook (AP): Used for magazines, newspapers, and internet
• Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago): Used from publishing to science, one of the most popular styles

For MLA, APA, and Chicago Manual of Style, you should use italics for long works and quotations for short works.

For AP style, however, you never use italics for pieces of work — no matter the length. Additionally, the APA style neither uses quotation marks or italics for shorter works. Instead, it expects them to be written as normal text.

Sometimes, the choice of style may be up to you as a writer. If that’s the case, then it’s best to stay consistent throughout your work with your usage of italics, underlines and quotation marks.

Short Works: How to Emphasize Titles of Shorter Pieces of Work

When you are making reference to a title of an article or a chapter in a book, you shouldn’t put it in italics. Instead, you can use quotation marks to emphasize these smaller pieces of work. This is the same rule for titles of episodes of shows.

Do You Italicize Punctuation in Titles?

When a piece of work includes punctuation, like a question mark for example, that part of the title should be italicized, too. For example, you’d write, “I love the book Oh the Places, You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss.”

However, when you are writing and using italics in a sentence for emphasis or within a parenthetical, then you do not italicize the punctuation.

Exceptions For Emphasizing Titles

Like with most aspects of English, there are some exceptions to the rule. One exception is when you have a book that is a collection of various novel titles, like Lord of the Rings. In this case, you’d put the title of the specific books in quotation marks, but you’d keep the title of the collection in italics.

Additionally, when the word “the” is part of a title, you do not italicize it. For example, it’s correct to write the New York Times.

How To Capitalize Properly

Titles have special formatting and capitalization rules. For example, you only capitalize the first word and all main words in a title.

You do not capitalize articles, such as “a,” “an” or “the.” For example, you’d write: War and Peace instead of War And Peace.

When to Use Quotations Instead

There are very specific cases for when you should elect to use quotation marks for the titles of works as opposed to italics. Use quotations for:

• Poems
• Articles in journals or magazines
• Songs
• Short stories
• Book chapters
• Television episodes

Examples of Correct Usage of Italics

Here’s a list of examples to help for reference sake:

• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (movie title, notice that articles are lower case)
• The Cat in the Hat (book title)
• “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (song title)
• “How Pandemics End” (article title)
• The New York Times (newspaper title)
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” (a short story)

Final Thoughts

Knowing when to italicize or use quotation marks is not a one-size-fits-all answer. It may depend on the writing format you’ve been instructed to write in.

However, a general rule of thumb to follow is that longer pieces of work, like books, require italics, whereas shorter pieces of work, like poems or articles, will be written with quotation marks.

One of the most annoying cases in writing is formatting the book titles. Whenever you mention the source in your paper, you face the question: how you must write a book title in an essay this time? Of course, there are rules – separate for each format, and more exclusions of particular cases of usage. It is excellent if you have a comprehensive reference at hand to consult, but it is not always possible.

Mentioning the book titles on writing is a frequent problem. If you mention them in an essay or other research paper, there will be regulations for APA, MLA, Chicago, and so on. It is a primary requirement of the academic writing style that you can’t ignore. The core of the problem is, there are several ways of formatting these titles, and very often, you have to use both in one text.

Scared? Don’t be. We’ve prepared this manual to describe how to write book titles in academic papers for every case.

Do You Underline, Italicize Book Titles or Put Them in Quotations?

The Word text editor gives you plenty of means for the text formatting in writing. You can mark it by the size, by the font type, by color, and so. All the achievements of technical progress are for you to distinguish a text fragment from the rest. However, the variety of identifying means without rules would turn any text into an unreadable mess.

Unifying let us develop the standards and make the written text neat. The same rules apply to the process of writing. Initially, there were three traditional methods: 

• Underlining the text;
• Italicizing the text;
• Putting the text in quotations.

With time, the practice of underlining became obsolete. In fact, it was a pre-Word way that is not needed anymore.

When you check how to write a book title in an essay now, remember: it is either to italicize or to put the title in quotation. Underlining is extremely rare.  

Now, let’s see when and where you apply all these methods. 

• Underlining. It is an old method that is replaced by new options, almost everywhere. Still, some professors demand to indicate the titles in essays this way. Thus, the rule is simple: use the underlining method for the book titles mentioned in essays if there is a direct requirement to do so. Another case is a handwritten essay – this method applies there. However, the situation is even rarer.
• Italicizing. It is the most common way to mark the book and magazine titles in writing. The rule applies to the titles of full works. It could be a single book, or a magazine, or a newspaper, and so on. One more case refers to the book series names consisting of several completed novels. e.g., Gone with the Wind, The Washington Post, A Song of Ice and Fire
• Quotation marks. The method applies to “shorter works” and “parts of the whole.” The titles of works demanding the quotation marks are short stories, articles, poems, or book chapters. Note a specific case of usage: the full book’s title is in quotation marks if that book is a part of a series, and the name of the series is present there.  e.g., “Bird-Understander” by Craig Arnold, “The Furnished Room” by O Henry, the novel “Small Gods” from the Discworld series 

How to Put a Book Title in an Essay According to Citation Styles

To refer a book title in an essay is crucial because of formatting demands. Every essay assignment includes the requirements for the formatting style that the student must obey. While the rules of formatting are similar for the entire text, the real challenge comes for citations. 

Incorrect formatting of reference is often equated to the absence of the citation, which is not a minor issue to omit. If you don’t specify that you refer to someone else’s words, it stands for plagiarism. Thus, check the style formatting rules when you put a book title in an essay and be extra careful.  

For in-text citations, when you mention someone’s data, you mostly use the author’s name together with the number of the page in that source. It helps to find the original quickly. If you need to name the full title of the source, the rules will be different.  

APA Style

APA is the most favored formatting style in colleges and universities – it is often the default style. 

The main characteristic feature to note is are: 

• Use quotation marks for the single book title mentioned in the text – not italics;
• The first word of the title is capitalized, as well as all terms longer than four symbols. Note that it applies to the two-component words with hyphens – both parts should be capitalized.  

e.g., “A Hat Full of Sky” by Terry Pratchett 

“The Confidence-Man” by Herman Melville

MLA Style

MLA is the default choice for the essays in English, literature, and other humanities. The book title in the MLA-formatted essay should match the following rules:

• The title of the single book or a journal must be in italics;
• If the source is a part of a more significant collection (a book chapter or a novel from the series). Then, it must be in quotation marks and not italicized.

e.g., The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

“A Scandal in Bohemia” from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Chicago Style

Chicago style refers to the book titles in the way similar to MLA:

• The title of a single book is in italics;
• The title of a particle belonging to the whole (a book chapter, etc.) is in quotations. 

e.g., The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

“The Audience” is chapter 3 of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

Exceptions for Emphasizing Titles

Exceptions are integral parts of any rule, and you should remember them. In our case, the case worth mentioning when you write a book title in the essay relates to poetry:

A poem is usually a short piece. Besides, most lyrics are parts of collections. Thus, you apply the standard rule of putting the title in quotes without italics for the poem’s title.

e.g., “The Pilgrim” by Adam Mickiewicz

However, the exclusion takes place when you deal with long and sophisticated poems – a verse novel. In this case, you should italicize it. 

e.g., The Ring and the Book by Robert Browning

Punctuation in the Title

One more specific case with writing a book title is using punctuation. The rule is simple: 

If the punctuation sign is a part of the title itself – you include it into the formatting string. 

e.g., I took Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? From the library. 

I remember that story, and it was “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” by Agatha Christie.

If the title does not have punctuation signs of its own, make sure to leave the symbols in your sentence outside of the book title: 

e.g., Could you show me your edition of The Lord of the Rings?  

Did you read the “For Whom the Bell Tolls”?

Need Help Formatting Your Paper?

We hope that our manual was of help, and you’ll always know how to write a book title, no matter which formatting style you must apply to your essay. If you aren’t sure and can’t afford to miss an issue in formatting, you can order this service. Our professional editors will take your paper and ensure its excellent look and match for all the formatting requirements.

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