Bibliographic references

The point of a bibliographic reference is to allow your readers to track down your sources. As the examples in the list of works cited above show, you need to include standard bibliographic information: author, title, place of publication, publisher, and year of publication.

　　Titles

　　Get the title from the title page, not the cover or another source. Give spelled-out equivalents of symbols like &. When a title consists of two phrases on separate lines, join them with a colon. For example, this title page would be listed as Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts.

SHAKESPEARE REREAD

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The texts in new contexts

　　Alphabetization

　　Alphabetize the list by author, or for any anonymous works by title （ignoring but not deleting A, An, and The）.

　　Capitalization

　　Capitalize all significant words, regardless of how the original source is capitalized. Capitalize most words except articles （a, an, the）, prepositions （of, to, in, against）, coordinating conjunctions （and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet）, and the to in infinitives. But if any of these occurs as the first or last word of a title or subtitle, capitalize it.

　　Underlining/italics and quotation marks

　　The titles of works published independently （not within another volume） are typically formatted with underlining （or, increasingly often, italics）. These include books, plays, long poems published as books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, journals, films, radio and television programs, web sites, CDs, software, ballets, operas, paintings, and other works and artifacts that stand on their own.

　　The titles of works published within other works are typically placed in quotation marks. These include articles, essays, stories, short poems, chapters, encyclopedia entries, sections of online documents, songs, and individual episodes of broadcast programs.

　　Titles in titles

　　Underlined （or italicized） titles in quoted titles. Retain the underlining: "Death in Death in Venice."

　　Quoted titles in quoted title. Switch to single quotation marks for the inner title: "Ironic reversal in Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'"

　　Underlined titles in underlined titles. Don't underline or use quotation marks: Stowe's Trumpet: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Civil War.

　　Quoted title in underlined title. Keep the quotation marks: "Sailing to Byzantium" and Modern Memory

　　If a quotation-mark title ends a sentence, put the period （but not other punctuation marks like question marks） inside the quotation mark.

　　Exceptions

　　Titles of sacred writings like the Koran or Bible （and all books therein） are not underlined or italicized: "The story of Moses is told mainly in Exodus and Deuteronomy."

　　Neither are the names of laws or other political documents （the U.S. Constitution）, musical compositions like symphonies or concertos （Beethoven's Symphony no. 3）, series, societies, buildings, conferences, and courses.

　　The divisions of a work （preface, introduction, foreword, act, scene, canto, section, etc.） are not underlined or put in quotation marks; nor are they capitalized when used in the text of a paper: "Claudius dominates act 4 of the play."