• the “to” in infinitives (ex. How to Play Chess)
• articles (ex. Under the Bamboo Tree)
Articles should be capitalized if they occur at the start of a subtitle (ex. Building
Libraries in Exile: The English Convents and Their Book Collections in the
Seventeenth Century)
For untitled works, use the first line or full text if the text is short enough, and capitalize as it appears in
the source. Follow the formatting guidelines for your source just as if you were using the title.
• Gertrude Stein’s poem “The house was just twinkling in the moon light”
• The tweet “Avoiding Plagiarism: it’s easy with MLA’s free online guidelines”
For capitalizing with quotations, capitalize:
• after you use a verb to introduce a quote (ex. writes, says, states, exclaims, etc.)
In The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel writes, “Our possessions outlast us.”
Of our personal belongings, Hilary Mantel writes, “[T]hey will be our witnesses
when we are gone.”
• prepositions (ex. The Artist as Critic)
• coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so. (ex. Romeo and Juliet)
Do not capitalize the following parts of speech if they occur in the middle of the title:
• nouns (ex. The Flowers of Europe)
• pronouns (ex. Save Our Children)
• verbs (ex. America Watches Television)
• adjectives (ex. The Lovely Bones)
• adverbs (ex. Only Slightly Corrupt)
• subordinating conjunctions: after, although, as, as if, as soon as, because, before, if, that, unless,
until, when, where, while. (ex. Life As I Find It)
For capitalizing titles, capitalize the first word, the last word, and all principal words. In titles, you
should capitalize:
• the first letter of the first word in a block quote.
When a quote is integrated into your sentence, lowercase the letter if it would be lowercase in a normal
sentence. Use square brackets to show if you have changed the capitalization from the source.
In The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel writes, “[o]ur possessions outlast
us.”