The second field is the quoted title field. The purpose of the title field is to limit the scope of the citation to a portion of the whole. Thus, if no title is given, the contents of the entire work is included, but if a title is present, only the specifically cited portion should be considered. There are two kinds of titles encountered in source material and each is treated differently. The first type is optional and goes in the title field and the second one is required and is a subpart of the publication field. The way you tell the difference is that if it stands alone (i.e. what you might request from the library) it is publishing information, however, if it refers to a part of something (i.e. an article in a magazine), it belongs in the title field. Below is a chart listing the kinds of materials found in each category:
| Goes in title field: | Goes in the Paper Publication field* |
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| * Please see the Paper Publication Field page | |
The general rule for titles in the title field is to begin with a double quote, give the full title, then a period and double quote. Always capitalize the first and last word. All other words are also capitalized except articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, and the infinitive 'to." Note that the end period is always inside the closing quotation mark:
"The Hope of the Future: Peacekeeping in the 21st Century."
The articles are a, an, and the.
The prepositions include aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, anti, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, concerning, considering, despite, down, during, except, excepting, excluding, following, for, from, in, inside, into, like, minus, near, of, off, on, onto, opposite, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, round, save, since, than, through, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, versus, via, with, within, and without.
The coordinating conjunctions are and, but, for, nor, or, so, and yet.
SPECIAL CASE LABELS
Occasionally, writers need to cite material that would ordinarily have a title field but actually has no title given. In these cases, a label is substituted. Labels are created by the user and should concisely describe the cited material as shown in the following examples. Labels do not use quotation marks, are always capitalized, and end in a period:
| A book's introduction | Introduction. |
| A book's preface | Preface. |
| A book's foreword | Foreword. |
| A book's afterword | Afterword. |
| A letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine | Letter. |
| An untitled editorial | Editorial. |
| An editiorial entitled "My Opinion" | "My Opinion." Editorial. |
| An untitled interview | Interview. |
| An untitled personal interview by the writer | Personal Interview. |
| An untitled interview by others (e.g. Dan Rather) | Interview with Dan Rather. |
| An untitled telephone interview by the writer | Telephone interview. |
| An untitled email interview by the writer | E-mail interview. |
| An untitled cartoon | Cartoon. |
| A cartoon entitled "Bush at War" | "Bush at War." Cartoon. |
| An untitled comic strip | Comic Strip. |
| A comic strip entitled "Peanuts" | "Peanuts." Comic strip. |
| An untitled advertisement | Advertisement. |
| An untitled oral address | Address. |
| An untitled lecture | Lecture. |
| An untitled Keynote speech | Keynote speech. |
| An untitled reading | Reading. |
| A letter to the writer | Letter to the author. |
| A memo to the writer usually as a member of a group | Memo to Acme employees. |
| An unpublished letter (e.g. to Charles Darwin) | Letter to Charles Darwin. |
| An untitled personal web page | Home page. |
N.B. The logic of this is simple and follows from common gramatical usage. If the title was created by the author of the work, the user is simply borrowing it and borrowed material is signified by the presence of quotation marks. However, since the user creates labels, they must be given in plain text without quotation marks.
