How to Write a Book Title in an APA Essay

If you’re not sure how to properly reference a book title in your essay, here are some tips: Underline the full title, italicize it, and Reference a single chapter, multi-volume work, comic strip, or any other source of information. Depending on the style and format of the essay, you might also want to highlight parts of the title or use quotation marks to make it more readable.

Underline or italicize the full title of a book

How to underline or italicize a full title of a book in an essay depends on the style guide or platform you are using. Book titles should be underlined, while plays and magazines should be italicized. The author’s last name should be included in links and quotations. Using the author’s last name is also acceptable when referring to a book by the same name as the author.

In an essay using APA style, book titles are italicized in the text. The author’s name and year of publication must be enclosed in parentheses. If you are citing a book that contains subtitles, you can separate them with a colon. However, you cannot italicize the title of a book if it is not a title.

Reference a chapter of a book

How to reference a chapter of a book in an APA style essay depends on its format and style. First, the citation should begin with the author’s last name and the date of publication. Then, the publisher and page numbers should be noted. After the publisher, add a period. Next, list the authors or editors of the book and the chapter title. Capitalize the first word of each of the two, as well as any proper nouns.

The formatting of this citation is similar to that for an article, except that it specifies the volume and page number. The chapter is then treated as a book chapter. If the author does not provide the DOI, the chapter is still considered a chapter of an edited book. To avoid such a situation, use the author’s last name, the publication year, and a comma between the last name and the page number.

Reference a multivolume work

How to reference a multivolume work in your essay? There are two basic ways of referencing a book: a single volume and a multivolume work. A volume is a collection of printed sheets from a particular publication in a given year. A single volume can have anywhere from one to ten issues in the same year. In addition, a multivolume work is not open-ended; the project has a planned end date and a finite number of volumes.

To properly reference a multivolume book, start by providing the volume number of the work. Journal articles should also be cited, with the name of the author, journal volume or issue number, and page number. Books and journals paginated by volume should have their author and date of publication. Map references should include the scale and author of the map. You can use either a single or multivolume work as a source for your essay.

Reference a comic strip

The first step in referencing a comic strip in an essay is to identify the comic and author. Comics can be collected in book form, with each individual issue being cited as a separate chapter. Comics are more complex, with several authors and coauthors. Depending on the source, authorship can range from first name to initials, with the first name listed first and then the last name. The next step is to specify the month and year in which the comic was published.

A comic strip published in a newspaper or magazine can be referenced as a single comic page, but the process of citing it differs. APA and MLA guidelines don’t stipulate a specific format for citing comics. For example, serialized comics should follow the same guidelines as a magazine article. For non-serialized comic strips, however, the citation method should be the same as a book.