A Free Tutorial On How To Quote An Essay Title

Sometimes when you are writing a paper the hardest part is not gathering information or getting your ideas down on the page, it is dealing with all the little requirements and logistical hang ups of different style formats. It may seem like for every class you take you hare having to learn a new way of formatting your paper and citing your sources. And while you may wish that the academic world would get their act together and agree on a single way of doing it, the truth is that you will undoubtedly have to continue using several different formatting styles.

Why is this? Well the short answer is because everyone in academia wants to be special and think they know the best way of doing things. The long answer is that different styles have evolved on their own within different subjects and fields because, unfortunately, those fields work with each other very little. The result is that each discipline, or even sub-discipline has a different way of doing things. Take geology for example—if you write a paper for sedimentology (the study of sedimentary rocks) you will probably be required to cite your sources using the standard format for the Journal of Sedimentology. But if you are writing a paper on geomorphology (the study of the shape of geologic formations) you will have to use a totally different format from the Journal of Geomorphology.

The best thing you can do in the face of this is to learn what is in common between all these different requirements.

The general rule of thumb for quoting the title of an piece is to have the title in regular font, with each major word capitalized, and quotation marks around it.

“A Free Tutorial on how to Quote an Essay Title”

This is how you would use it in your text. For instance, if you were referring to this article in a paper, you might lead into it saying ‘In the article…”. How you would format the pieces title in your bibliography or works cited will depend entirely on what style format you are using.

The one exception to using quotation marks around the title when you quote it is if the piece an be considered a stand alone piece. Typically this is done for the title of books, but if the article you are referring to isn’t included in an anthology or magazine you might want to consider using italics.

 
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