SCC Research Guides: MLA Guide: Formatting the Author and Title

Formatting the Author

You can also review section 5.5 Author: How to Style It in the online *MLA Handbook*.
Authors	Rule	Examples
No Author	If no author given, skip the author and start with the title of source.
1 Author	Last Name, First Name.	Smith, John.
2 Authors	Last Name, First Name, and First Name Last Name.	Smith, John, and Mary Fields.
3+ Authors	Last Name, First Name of First Author, et al.	Smith, John, et al.
Association or Company	Use the name of the association or company as the author. If a work is written and published by an organization, list the organization as publisher only.	American Cancer Society.
Pseudonyms	Use pseudonyms and online usernames like regular author names.	@jsmith.
Editor or other role	If the role of that person or group is something other than creating the work’s main content (as the author), follow the name with a label that describes the role. Only do this in the author field if it is important to highlight this person; otherwise use the Other Contributors field.	Nunberg, Geoffrey, editor.

Formatting the Title

You can also review sections 5.25 Title of Source: How to Style It and 5.31–5.37: Title of Container Element in Works Cited in the online *MLA Handbook*.
Source	Rule: Italics or "quotation marks"	Example
Entire Book	Italicize self-contained works	The Awakening.
Collection of Essays	Italicize self-contained works	The Norton Introduction to Literature,
Essay, story, or poem	Contained in a larger work (book, website, etc.); use "quotation marks"	"The Cultural Consequences of Printing."
Play	Italicize plays even if they are in a larger work.	Romeo and Juliet.
Article from Journal, Magazine, or Newspaper	Contained in a larger work (journal) use "quotation marks"	"Literary History and Sociology."
Entire Journal, Magazine, or Newspaper	Italicize self-contained works	The Georgia Review.
Entire Website	Italicize self-contained works	WebMD.
Website Article	Contained in a larger work (website) use "quotation marks"	"Free Will."
Song	Contained in a larger work (album) use "quotation marks"	"Pretty Hurts."

You can also review section 2.90 Capitalizing Titles in English in the online MLA Handbook.

MLA requires writers use title-style capitalization: capitalize the first word, the last word, and all principal words.

Capitalize the following parts of speech in titles:

Part of Speech	Part of Speech Examples	Title Example
Nouns	Person, Place, or Thing	The Flowers of Europe
Pronouns	Words used to replace a noun (I, she, he, you, it, we, our, or they)	Save Our Children; Some Like It Hot
Verbs	Words used to convey action	America Watches Television; What Is Literature?
Adjectives	Words used to describe a noun	The Ugly Duckling
Adverbs	Words used to describe a verb	Only Slightly Corrupt
Subordinating Conjunctions	Words used to connect dependent clauses to independent clauses (after, although, as, as if, as soon as, because, before, if, that, unless, until, when, where, while)	Life As I Find It
First Word	MLA requires writers to always capitalize the first word of the title	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Last Word	MLA requires writers to always capitalize the last word of the title	Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages

Do not capitalize non-principal words. See below for examples.

Part of Speech	Part of Speech Examples	Title Example
prepositions	words used before a noun or pronoun to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships	The Artist as Critic
coordinating conjunctions	words used to connect words, phrases, and clauses that coordinate (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet)	Romeo and Juliet
the to in infinitives	when "to" is used to express purpose or necessity after a verb followed by a pronoun or a noun	How to Play Chess
articles	words used to identify specific or general nouns (a, an, the)	Under the Bamboo Tree

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