The Modern Language Association Handbook is the required style guide for most undergraduate and graduate papers in the humanities. MLA title case capitalizes all major words while lowercasing articles, short prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions.
MLA Style title case capitalizes the first letter of all principal words in a title, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Articles, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions are lowercased unless they appear at the start or end of the title.
The MLA Handbook is published by the Modern Language Association and is updated periodically to reflect evolving academic conventions. It is the required citation and formatting standard for most English and humanities departments at universities across North America.
MLA Style is the standard for papers written in English literature, film studies, cultural studies, and other humanities disciplines. If your professor or journal specifies MLA format, the title case rules here apply to your paper's title, section headings, and any works cited entries.
High school and undergraduate college students encounter MLA Style more than any other format. Its title case rules are straightforward and consistent, making it one of the easier style guides to apply correctly from the start.
MLA capitalizes the first and last words of a title, as well as all words in between except articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions. The word "is," being a verb, is always capitalized in MLA Style.
Hyphenated compounds in titles follow a specific rule in MLA Style. Both elements of a hyphenated compound are capitalized unless the second element is an article, preposition, or conjunction.
MLA and Chicago Style title case are nearly identical in their treatment of most words. The primary differences appear in their citation formats and some nuances about how they handle hyphenated words and subtitles.
Students switching between MLA and Chicago Style can generally apply the same title case rules to both. The meaningful differences between the two guides are more relevant to citation formatting than to capitalization.