Formatting Titles

Yes, you need to use title case, but you need to know what it is and how to do it. Well, that depends on who you ask. No matter which style guide you use, the basic principle is the same: The first word of the title and subtitle are uppercased, and major words have the first letter of the word capitalized. However, each style guide has its own requirements for how to use title case for that style.

Below you will see the guidelines compiled for APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turabian.

1. “Lowercase the second part of a species name, such as fulvescens in Acipenser fulvescens, even if it is the last word in a title or subtitle” (CMOS, p. 527, 8.159).

*Listed coordinating conjunctions are directly from their respective manuals. See below for attributions to each manual. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). Located at: https://owl.excelsior.edu . This site is licensed under a https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000 The Modern Language Association of America. (2021). MLA handbook (9th ed.). The Modern Language Association of America. The University of Chicago Press. (2017). The Chicago manual of style (17th ed.). https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos17 Turabian, K. L. (2018). A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations: Chicago Style for students and researchers (9th ed.) (W.C. Booth, G. G. Colomb, J. M. Williams, J. Bizup, & W.T. Fitzgerald, Eds.). https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226430607.001.0001