In MLA Style, Which Titles Are Italicized and Which Are Enclosed in Quotation Marks?

Italics are used primarily for the titles of full-length works that are published separately.  There are also a couple of specialized uses for italics with titles.

• Novels
• Novellas
• Plays
• Poems of 100 lines or more
• Films
• Anthologies
• Complete cd’s (as opposed to individual tracks)
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• TV shows
• The names of ships, trains, airplanes, spacecraft (the initials that precede the name are not italicized)

Quotation marks are used to punctuate titles of short works and parts of other works–i.e., titles of those works that are not published separately.

• “Chapter titles”
• “Individual musical tracks or songs”
• “The titles of individual TV episodes”
• “Poems of fewer than 100 lines”
• “Short story titles”
• “Newspaper/Magazine/Journal articles”
• “Essay titles”
• “Titles of plays, poems, & novels that, although long, are published in a collection or anthology.”
• For example, if Paradise Lost appeared in a collection of works by John Milton, The Complete Works of John Milton, the title of the poem would be enclosed in quotation marks (“Paradise Lost”) when you cited it.