Presenting titles

Minimal capitalisation is preferred when writing titles of books, reports and many creative works, such as plays, poems, paintings and films.

See also:

• Bold, underlining and italics for information on use of italics
• Capitalisation styles for definitions of maximal (title case) and minimal (sentence case) capitalisation
• Citing other work
• References for details about citing authors and presenting references in a reference list.

Titles of written and creative works

Books and reports – full titles

Book and report titles use minimal capitalisation and italics:

If the style you are following uses maximal capitals rather than minimal capitals (as recommended here), capitalise the first word after a colon:

When using maximal capitals, use capitals for both parts of a hyphenated compound word:

Books and reports – abbreviated titles

When citing a document that is also known by a shortened title, use the full title with the shortened title in brackets at the first citation. Subsequent citations of the document can use the shortened form.

Use roman type and maximal capitalisation for the shortened title:

Parts of a book or report

Use single quotation marks and minimal capitalisation for titles of articles and chapters within a book or report:

Poems, short stories and plays

Use minimal capitalisation and italics for titles of poems, short stories and plays:

Use single quotation marks and minimal capitalisation for titles within a book:

If discussing a short story that has been published as a standalone book (but would be more familiar as part of a collection), treat it as a book title if referring specifically to the standalone volume. If speaking about the story when it is in a collection, or when the form is not specified, use single quotation marks and minimal capitalisation:

Journals, magazines and newspapers

Use maximal capitals and italics for the titles of periodicals:

If The, A or An occur at the start of the official title, they are lower case and not italicised in text, unless the title starts a sentence:

Omit The, A or An when providing source details in parentheses, unless the title has only 2 words:

Parts of journals, magazines and newspapers

The amount of bibliographic detail required to specify an article or story in a journal, magazine or newspaper may vary. Articles in technical journals usually have dates, volume numbers and page ranges. These details are usually included in a reference list, but can be cited in the text, using a format similar to that recommended in Journal, magazine and newspaper articles:

Here, 7 is the volume number, 6 the issue or part number and 939–941 the page numbers for the article.

For in-text citation of publications with dates, such as newspapers and some magazines, the format will vary with the numbering system used by the publication. Newspapers are dated by day, but magazine issues may be dated by month, season or quarter, or may simply be numbered sequentially with no date. Page numbers may not always be necessary:

For articles that do not have an obvious author, provide the available bibliographic information:

Comics

Enclose the titles of comic strips in quote marks, and use minimal capitalisation and roman type:

Conventions and agreements

Text in conventions and agreements usually consists mostly of numbered paragraphs and sections (they look like ‘legal’ documents). Use maximal capitalisation and roman type for the titles of conventions and agreements:

Do not list conventions and agreements in the reference list; instead, for a print document, insert a footnote providing the web address for accessing the document. For online content, hyperlink the title in the text.

See also Conventions, treaties, protocols, codes and projects.

Legislation

See Legislation for formatting the titles of Acts, Regulations, Bills and so on.

Film and television

Give the titles of films, telemovies and television series in italics and minimal capitalisation. For sequels and multipart films, use the official title, including the use of numerals and punctuation:

Films with part numbers and/or subtitles – for example, many sequels – must be punctuated carefully. Capitalise words after colons:

Episodes of a television series, or parts within anthology films, are given in minimal capitalisation and single quotation marks:

Music

Larger works of music and album names use maximal capitalisation and italics.

Present titles of orchestral works in roman. Capitalise the type of work and key, but retain lower case for all other elements:

If including a catalogue number:

If the piece is known by another name, use maximal capitalisation and italics for it:

However, use minimal capitalisation without italics when the name is a description rather than a title:

Individual song titles are given in minimal capitalisation and single quotation marks:

Artworks

Give the titles of paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures and art installations in italics and minimal capitalisation:

Do not italicise a description as if it were a title:

But, if the piece is known by another name, use minimal capitalisation and italics for it:

Databases, computer programs and computer products

For databases, use maximal capitalisation and roman type:

Some computer languages are defined by international standards that include how to present the name:

For others, use the product information as a guide:

Some product names begin with a lower-case letter; avoid placing them at the beginning of a sentence:

Some computer command and program names are case-sensitive – that is, they will not work in a command line to run a program if the case is incorrect (this occurs on macOS and Linux, for example). Use the correct capitalisation in text describing a program’s use, such as a computer program manual, and use a different font to distinguish the command:

The product name and the name of the file that is run may be different:

Some terms are both names and descriptions. UNIX is the trademarked name of a computer operating system that is built on code developed at Bell Labs. A unix is an operating system that follows the design principles of UNIX – for example, Linux and macOS are unixes. Capitalise unix (Unix) if it begins the sentence.

Titles of online material and websites in print documents

Avoid URLs in running text. Where possible, cite a website as a footnote, particularly if the mention is descriptive and does not refer to specific information. A description uses roman and minimal capitalisation:

For HTML pages or online documents (e.g. PDF format), it is usual to use hyperlinks for websites, webpages, and document titles cited in the text and in the reference list (see Text accessibility for information about hyperlinks). Underline the hypertext:

Clicking on the title takes the reader to the website. A footnote showing the URL is not necessary for an HTML page or for a PDF intended to be viewed online.

However, for an online PDF that is expected to be printed, the footnote should be retained so that the URL is available to readers who print the document:

See Online material for using URLs when citing references and in reference lists.

Summary of how to present titles