APA 7th Edition Style Guide: Titles

In general, the title of a work is recorded just as the words appear in the publication.

• Capitalize only the first word of a book or article title.
• Capitalize proper nouns, initials, and acronyms in a title.
• Separate a subtitle with a colon and a space. Capitalize the first letter of the subtitle.
• End the title with a period.
• Capitalize every major word in a journal or newspaper title, do not capitalize articles (i.e. a, and, the) unless they are the first word of the title.
• Italicize periodical and book titles.

Book titles

A book normally has one title. But, books may contain chapters or sections with individual titles. Or, a book may be part of a series or a single volume in a set. When citing a chapter out of a book include the chapter title (not italicized) and the page numbers.

Example:

Kovacs, D. K. (2002). How to locate international, African American, and Native American ancestors; Heraldry and lineage societies. Genealogical research on the web (pp. 117-154)...

Journal, magazine, and newspaper titles

Articles may appear in print or electronic journals, magazines, or newspapers. The reference will contain the title of the article and the title of publication in which it appears. The words of the article title should be capitalized the same way you capitalize a book title. The periodical title should proper title case formatting (i.e. a, and, the) and be italicized.

Example:

Davies, S. (2011, Spring). Income, gender, and consumption: A study of Malawian households. Journal of Developing Areas...

Gardiner, A. (2011, January 5). Stanford could lose QB, coach. USA Today...

Teproff, C. (2020, April 28). Are you struggling to feed your pets? Miami-Dade animal services wants to help. The Miami Herald...

Untitled Works

Works without a title should be designated with a description of the work in square brackets where the title is normally placed in the reference, include the description in the brackets. For untitled social media posts or comments use the first 20 words of the post or comment as the title and place a description of the title in brackets.

Example: 

Adams, P. (2020). [Table showing data from the 2010 U.S. census].

TCPalm. (2020, April 28). The near collapse of the airline industry because of the coronavirus is affecting — but so far not devastating — Treasure Coast businesses [TCPalm Facebook post].