composition titles
Apply these guidelines to the titles of books, book chapters, movies, plays, poems, stories, essays, articles, albums, songs, operas, radio and television programs, radio and television episodes, lectures, speeches, and works of art:
- Capitalize all words in a title except articles (a, an, the); prepositions of three or fewer letters (for, of, on, up, etc.); and conjunctions of three or fewer letters (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet, etc.) unless any of those start or end the title.
- Capitalize prepositions of four or more letters (above, after, down, inside, over, with, etc.) and conjunctions of four or more letters (because, while, since, though, etc.)
- Capitalize both parts of a phrasal verb: “What To Look For in a Mate”; “Turn Off the Lights in Silence.” But: “A Life of Eating Chocolate for Stamina”; “Living With Both Feet off the Ground.” (Note the different uses of “for” and “off,” and thus the different capitalization, in those examples.)
- Capitalize “to” in infinitives: “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.”
- In a deviation from AP style, titles of large works — books, journals, magazines, newspapers, albums, movies, television shows and the like — are italicized. Titles of shorter works — chapters, articles, essays, stories, poems, songs, television episodes and the like — are enclosed in quotation marks. For example: “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” was one of the most highly rated episodes of the TV show Mad Men. The professor’s research is discussed in the article “Green Tech Goes Global” in the latest issue of U.S. News & World Report.