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Typology: Essays (university)
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Illinois Valley Community College Writing Center
Writing Titles Titles create the first impression of an essay: It is important that your title creates interest and draws readers into your essay. Titles should be descriptive and provocative. Effective essay titles should reflect the purpose and tone of your essay. For example, if you are writing about a serious topic such as assisted suicide, you would not want your title to be humorous. It is often a good idea to write your title later in the writing process. In other words, don’t try to title your essay before you have it written. At first, you may want to use a tentative title which will likely change as you revise your drafts. Effective titles often pull words or phrases from the essay in which they are used. Avoid using clichéd phrases as titles. For example, “Beauty is Pain” is an overused phrase that has little impact on a reader.
Below are a few examples of real, interesting titles from existing works:
Capitalizing Titles Capitalize the major words of titles. Minor words—articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions—are not capitalized unless they are the first or last word of a title or subtitle. Here are a few examples:
Formatting Titles MLA—Titles should be one double-space below the heading and centered on the page. Titles should not be bolded, italicized, underlined, or placed in quotation marks. APA—APA does not provide guidelines for preparing the title page, but most instructors will ask you to include one. Follow the instructor’s guidelines.
See the reverse of this sheet for examples of titles in MLA and APA format.
MLA example
APA example
The entire page is double-spaced. The heading is centered and retains the same format as the rest of the paper.
Your instructor will provide specific instructions. This is a commonly used APA format.