How to Write a Book Title in an Essay: Style Guide

Italicize the title of a book when you name it in an essay. Titles of shorter works that sit inside a larger one, such as a short story, a poem, or a chapter, go in quotation marks instead.

Formatting matters because it tells your reader that a group of words is a title and not part of your sentence. It also signals what kind of work you're naming.

Underlining used to do the same job. Typewriters couldn't produce italics, so writers underlined titles instead.

Today you underline a title only when you're writing by hand. In a typed essay, italics have replaced it everywhere.

Most essays follow MLA, APA, or Chicago style. All three agree on italics for books, but they differ on capitalization and on how a title looks in your reference list.

By the end of this article, you'll be able to format any book title you name in an essay, including the awkward ones with subtitles, quoted titles, and possessives.

How to Format a Book Title in 5 Steps

The correct format depends on the style guide your instructor assigned, so check the syllabus before you start.

Most of what follows holds across MLA, APA, and Chicago. Capitalization is where they differ, and so is the way a title appears once you list your sources.

Step 1: Choose Italics or Quotation Marks

One question decides the format: does the work stand on its own, or was it published inside something larger?

A book is a complete, separate publication, so its title takes italics. The same goes for a play, a film, a magazine, or a journal.

A short story, a poem, an essay, or a chapter usually appears inside a book, a magazine, or a collection. Those titles take quotation marks.

The table below sets the two formats side by side:

Both formats turn up in ordinary sentences like these:

Step 2: Follow Your Assigned Style Guide

The three styles you're most likely to be assigned agree on the basics and differ in the details.

The table below compares how each one handles a book title:

APA is the one that catches students out. Inside your sentences it uses title case, exactly like MLA and Chicago.

In the reference list it switches to sentence case, so only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns stay capitalized.

Step 3: Capitalize the Title Correctly

Book titles take title case in the body of your essay, whichever style you follow.

You capitalize the first word, the last word, and the main words between them. You also capitalize the first word after a colon.

These word types stay lowercase unless they land first or last:

• Articles: “a,” “an,” and “the”

• Coordinating conjunctions such as “and,” “but,” and “or”

• Short prepositions such as “of,” “in,” and “with”

• The word “to” in an infinitive, as in “to build.”

Sentence case replaces title case mainly in one place: an APA reference entry. There you capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns, and nothing else.

The same title looks different in each position:

Step 4: Punctuate Subtitles and Special Cases

Punctuation that belongs to a title stays part of the title, which means it stays inside the italics.

A subtitle sits after a colon, and you capitalize the first word that follows it. Italicize both halves, colon included.

Three situations cause most of the confusion: a title inside a title, a series name, and a possessive. Each one works like this:

• Title inside a title: keep the quotation marks on the shorter work and italicize the book title around it.
• Series name: capitalize it but leave it in regular type, as in the Harry Potter series.
• Possessive: add the apostrophe and the “s” after the italics, not inside them.

Styles disagree about a book title printed inside another book title, so check your assigned guide before you settle on a format there.

These two sentences show the punctuation rules at work:

Step 5: Introduce the Title in Your Sentence

The first time you name a book, give your reader everything needed to identify it.

Write the full title, formatted correctly, along with the author's full name. A short signal phrase does that work in a few words.

After the first mention you can drop the author's first name and shorten a long title, as long as the short form keeps its italics.

Here is that pattern across two sentences of an essay:

Repeating a long title in full every time slows your reader down.

Titles of Stories, Poems, and Other Works

Essays name plenty of works besides books: short stories, poems, plays, films, magazines and journals, articles, songs, and albums.

The table below sorts each type by format:

One rule decides every row: a work published on its own takes italics, and a work published inside something larger takes quotation marks.

A poem and a film show the two formats in use:

How to Quote a Book in an Essay

Sometimes you need an author's exact words rather than a summary of them.

A short quotation runs inside your own sentence, wrapped in double quotation marks. Add the citation in parentheses right after the quotation, then end the sentence with a period.

MLA gives the author's last name and a page number. APA adds the year and the abbreviation “p.” before the page.

A long quotation becomes a block quote instead. MLA sets the limit at more than four typed lines of prose, and APA sets it at 40 words or more.

In a block quote you indent the whole passage, drop the quotation marks, and put the period before the citation.

Here is a short quotation handled in MLA style:

Common Book Title Mistakes to Avoid

A handful of errors turn up again and again in student essays:

• Underlining a title in a typed essay

• Putting a title in italics and quotation marks at the same time

• Using quotation marks for a whole book and italics for a single chapter

• Putting a capital letter on small words such as “a,” “of,” and “the”

• Making a title bold so it stands out on the page

• Switching between formats partway through the essay.

Underlining and bold are the two that date an essay fastest. Underlining stood in for italics on typewriters, and word processors removed the need for it.

Bold was never part of any of the main style guides, so it reads as a personal choice rather than a convention.

Mixing italics and quotation marks is the other frequent slip. Each format does the same job, so a title needs one or the other, never both.

Final Thoughts on Writing Book Titles in Essays

Title formatting is a small part of an essay, and it is one of the easiest parts to get right. When every title follows the same rule from start to finish, your reader sees that you read the assignment closely.

Italics for books, quotation marks for shorter works, and title case inside your sentences: those three habits cover almost every title you will name.