How To Write Book Titles
Having a title in place before you start writing can help inform or reinforce your themes and motifs as you plan your novel.
How to write book titles. On an apa reference paper the rules are different from those used in mla and chicago. These methods do not always agree. Capitalize the first word and all words that have more than 4 letters. Without a book title your book can t exist. Designate a book title as separate from the rest of your text by placing the complete title and subtitle if it has one in italics.
Still i wouldn t recommend underlining a book s title. Your fiction title has done its job when it makes a prospective reader want to pick up your book or click on the title to take a peek inside. Italicize book titles in the text of your paper. Titles of books that form a larger body of work may be put in quotation marks if the name of the book series is italicized. In contrast shorter articles essays or chapters within the book are enclosed in quotation marks.
As earlier mentioned the style used to write a title of a book vary based on the referencing style of the paper i e apa mla or chicago. To encourage the reader to interact with your book your title should try to hint at the book s genre give readers a whiff of the story that follows and provoke curiosity. Capitalization rules in english important note about capitalization rules for titles. Italics for longer works such as books 2. Instead italicize the titles.
Titles of short works like poems articles short stories or chapters should be put in quotation marks. Titles of full works like books or newspapers should be italicized. Each word in the title of the book should be written with a capitalized letter except prepositions like at of in on etc. To learn one way to capitalize titles read this article. To learn more about the planning process go here for a complete guide and a free book outline template.
However ap style the guide used by journalists suggests putting titles in quotation marks not italicization. Secondly if you don t already think of the title of your book as a marketing decision start now. Rules for writing a book title in apa capitalization. For example breakfast at tiffany s by truman capote to the lighthouse by virginia woolf a river runs through it and other stories by norman maclean lord of the flies by william gerald golding etc.