How to write a book title in an essay

How to write a book title in an essay, is it hard? Well, not really. In fact, it’s pretty much the easiest thing you’ll do all day. Let me show you how:

To start, you need to understand that a book title is really a fancy word for just about anything. A dog’s name is good because it has several words. The first word of the title will be capitalized in your essay and the others (if any) are not (in most cases). If there are two words in your title, both of those words will be capitalized in your essay. For example: The Great Gatsby

I can see you’re looking at that, and not getting it yet. Let me give you an easier one: To Kill a Mockingbird .

When I say fancy word , I mean that the book title wouldn’t include numbers, punctuation marks, or anything other than letters. If you are still confused, check out this example from Word:

So in your essay you’d do the same thing, just add some capitalization and periods to it. So if your title was My Dog’s Name is Babe , then your sentence would read like this:

Babe is my dog’s name.

Did you notice that I didn’t capitalize the “My” in My Dog’s Name ? That is because it’s a short title or an initialism . Oh, and also because it wasn’t capitalized in the original sentence! So if your book title has more than one word in it, then all of those words will be capitalized.

The following is a list of some of the most common book titles and their proper way to be written in an essay:

My Dog’s Name is Babe is my dog’s name.

To Kill a Mockingbird kills mockingbirds, which should not be killed. Ever.

I Have a Dream has three words in it, all properly capitalized in your essay.

A Tale of Two Cities has two words in its title (both of them are proper nouns), so they will both need to be capitalized for you to get credit for using proper grammar!

If your book title doesn’t fit into one of those categories then I’ll have to leave you on your own for how to write a book title in an essay. On the bright side, that means you should be able to come up with your own way of doing it. (Isn’t that good news?)

Anyway, you get the point: writing book titles in essays is pretty easy! Try using some of these examples as a model for your next paper and I promise you won’t have any trouble at all!

Below is another Great Idea on how to write a book title in an essay

The first thing you’ll want to do is go back in time. Hop in a Delorean with Doc Brown and head to your favorite book store (I prefer Powells, they have chairs) and grab something. Anything! It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you can find a title of it online when you’re done.

If you don’t know how to use Google yet, I recommend taking this class from Duke University on Internet Enlightenment . Also be sure to visit the Library of Congress website for information regarding Copyright laws . Yes, there are still libraries around (although not as many since the rise of the almighty internet). You may also need something called a life outside of work (but that’s covered under “How To Survive Skool” and will be posted later this month).

Now that you have a title in hand, you’ll want to type it into the search engine of your choice. You should wind up on a page detailing the publication information for your chosen title. This is where things can get sticky: All titles are not created equal. Some will include the publisher name, others might add the author or genre as well. Some may even have all three! Either way, you should be able to find something that looks like it pertains to what your teacher asked for (for instance: if they ask for “The Life Cycle of an African Elephant” by Meghan C., you wouldn’t use “Understanding Angina from A–Z.” That would be silly, and your teacher will likely be unhappy with you).

If this fails (and it might, because new titles are being published literally every minute of the day), you’ll want to head to the library. Or rather, a big room that holds books called “The Library.” If you’re lucky they may have everything they own on computer by now. Although many schools seem to think the best way to save money is to eliminate as much paper as possible from their education system. So expect lots of hard work! But hey, if were not willing to do hard work for easy money in our lives then why even bother going for it? I don’t know about you but I hear prison is pretty easy all around…

Once you have the title, go ahead and write it in your essay. If you need help with this step, I recommend bringing a friend… or three!

Good luck out there! As always if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line. You can also contact your local Better Business Bureau for information on consumer protection services . And remember kids: If someone offers you something that is too good to be true.. believe them!

Conclusion

There… that wasn’t so hard, was it? If your teacher asks you how to write a book title in an essay, just use these three steps:

Get the title and publication info from Google. Use this information to buy or find a copy of the book at your favorite bookstore. Write down whatever is on there (and maybe ad some other stuff about it).

After all that hard work, you should have no problem getting an A+! Unless your teacher will only give As for titles written by famous people or published more than twenty years ago… then good luck! And remember kids: If someone offers you something that is too good to be true.. believe them!

Here is our next article on how to write an informative essay