How you cite an article title depends on which style guide you’re following. The two most common systems, APA and MLA, handle article titles differently: one uses plain text in sentence case, the other uses quotation marks with title case. Getting this right matters because article titles and journal or publication names follow separate formatting rules, and mixing them up is one of the most frequent citation errors.
Article Titles in APA Style
In APA style (used widely in psychology, education, nursing, and the social sciences), article titles in your reference list appear in plain text with no italics, no quotation marks, and no special formatting. You write the title in sentence case, meaning you capitalize only the first word, the first word after a colon or other punctuation that separates a main title from a subtitle, and any proper nouns. Everything else is lowercase.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. If the original article is published as “Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance,” your reference list entry would render the title as: Effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance. Notice that “sleep,” “deprivation,” “cognitive,” and “performance” all drop to lowercase. Only the first word keeps its capital letter.
The journal name, by contrast, is italicized and written in title case (most words capitalized). This visual distinction helps readers immediately tell the article title apart from the journal title. A full reference entry places the plain-text article title right before the italicized journal name, so the difference is clear at a glance:
Author, A. B. (Year). Article title in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, Volume(Issue), Page range. https://doi.org/xxxxx
When you mention an article title in the body of your paper (rather than in the reference list), APA recommends using title case and putting the title in quotation marks. So the same article referenced above would appear as “Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance” if you name it in a sentence. This is a detail many writers miss: the formatting rules differ between the reference list and the running text of your paper.
Article Titles in MLA Style
MLA style (standard in English, literature, humanities, and the arts) takes a different approach. Article titles always go inside quotation marks, both on your Works Cited page and in the body of your paper. You use title case, capitalizing all major words. Short words like “a,” “the,” “of,” and “in” stay lowercase unless they’re the first or last word of the title.
A Works Cited entry for a journal article in MLA looks like this:
Author Last Name, First Name. “Article Title in Title Case.” Journal Name, vol. X, no. X, Year, pp. XX–XX.
The quotation marks around the article title set it apart from the italicized journal or publication name. This container principle is central to MLA: the smaller work (the article) gets quotation marks, while the larger work that contains it (the journal, magazine, newspaper, or website) gets italics.
For example, if you’re citing a newspaper article, it would appear as: “New Health Center Targets County’s Uninsured Patients.” The title uses standard title case, and the quotation marks signal that this is a piece within a larger publication.
Title Case vs. Sentence Case
The difference between title case and sentence case trips up a lot of writers because the original article, as published, usually appears in title case. You need to know when to keep that capitalization and when to convert it.
Title case means you capitalize the first and last words and all major words in between. Articles (a, an, the), short prepositions (of, in, to, for), and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or) stay lowercase unless they begin the title. MLA uses title case everywhere.
Sentence case means you format the title as if it were a regular sentence. Only the first word, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon get capitalized. APA uses sentence case in the reference list. This means you’ll often need to “undo” the capitalization you see in the published version of the article. If the published title reads “The Role of Dopamine in Reward-Based Learning,” the APA reference list version becomes “The role of dopamine in reward-based learning.”
Chicago Style: A Third Option
Chicago style, common in history, business, and some social sciences, follows a pattern closer to MLA for article titles. In both footnotes and bibliography entries, article titles go in quotation marks with title case capitalization. The journal name is italicized, just as in the other two styles. If you’re using Chicago’s notes-bibliography system, the article title in a footnote looks nearly identical to how it appears in the bibliography, with quotation marks and full title-case capitalization in both places.
Quick Reference by Style
- APA reference list: Sentence case, no quotation marks, no italics
- APA in-text mention: Title case, quotation marks
- MLA (everywhere): Title case, quotation marks
- Chicago (everywhere): Title case, quotation marks
Online and Website Articles
The same rules apply to articles published online. In MLA and Chicago, a webpage article title goes in quotation marks with title case, and the website name is italicized. In APA, an online article title in the reference list uses sentence case with no special formatting, while the website name (if it’s not the same as the author) appears in italics.
One thing to watch for with online sources: the title that appears in the browser tab sometimes differs from the title displayed at the top of the article. Use the title shown on the article page itself, not the abbreviated version in the tab or URL.
Formatting Subtitles
When an article has a subtitle separated by a colon, all three major styles capitalize the first word after the colon. In APA sentence case, this is the only extra word that gets a capital: “Cognitive load theory: A new framework for understanding attention.” In MLA and Chicago title case, the first word after the colon is capitalized along with all other major words: “Cognitive Load Theory: A New Framework for Understanding Attention.”
If the main title ends with a question mark or exclamation point instead of a colon, the same principle applies. The first word of the subtitle is capitalized regardless of style.