Title your essay after you finish the draft. Take the key words from your thesis, name the specific subject (the novel, the policy, the town), and choose a shape: a plain statement of your claim, a question the essay answers, or a two-part title with a short hook before the colon and the precise topic after it. Then format it for your class: title case, centered, no quotation marks or italics, no final period. In APA, the title is also bold.
What a good essay title does
A title has three jobs. It names the subject closely enough that the reader knows what is coming. It signals the position you take or the question you are asking. And it sets a tone that matches the essay: a personal essay can be quiet and concrete, an argumentative one should sound like it has a claim to defend.
Your instructor reads the title before the first sentence. A title that could sit on top of thirty other essays in the stack tells them you have not yet decided what yours is about. A title that could only belong to your essay tells them you have.
- English Essay 3
A label. It says which assignment, not which essay. - Social Media
A topic, and far too broad for 1,500 words. - Social Media and Teenagers
Two topics, and no hint of how they connect. - How Group Chats Changed the Way Teenagers Argue
A specific subject and a claim. Good enough for most class essays. - Left on Read: How Group Chats Changed the Way Teenagers Argue
The same claim with a hook. It earns its place if the essay actually discusses unanswered messages.
Essay title formulas, with examples
A formula is a shape to fill, not a finished title. Fill the brackets with the most specific words from your draft: a name instead of "people", a place instead of "society", the actual effect instead of "effects". All examples here are original, and none uses a preposition of four letters or more, so each is capitalized the same way in APA, MLA and Chicago.
| Formula | Example | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Formula[Hook]: [specific topic and claim] | ExampleLeft on Read: How Group Chats Changed the Way Teenagers Argue | Good forAlmost any essay |
| Formula[Your claim, stated plainly] | ExampleLater School Start Times Are a Safety Measure | Good forArgumentative, persuasive |
| Formula[The question your essay answers] | ExampleWho Pays When the Library Closes on Sundays? | Good forResearch, expository |
| FormulaHow or Why [specific thing happens] | ExampleWhy Victor Frankenstein Never Names His Creature | Good forLiterary analysis |
| Formula“[Quotation from the text]”: [topic] in [work] | Example“A Truth Universally Acknowledged”: Money and Marriage in Pride and Prejudice | Good forLiterary analysis |
| Formula[Thing A] and [Thing B]: [what the pair reveals] | ExamplePaper Maps and Blue Dots: What Navigation Apps Do to Our Sense of Place | Good forCompare and contrast |
| Formula[A concrete image from your story] | ExampleThe Summer I Drove the Milk Truck | Good forNarrative, personal, reflective |
| Formula[Familiar phrase, turned]: [topic] | ExampleBreaking the Fast: What Skipping Breakfast Does to Test Scores | Good forLighter topics, sparingly |
The hook-and-colon shape works so often because each half does one job. The part before the colon can be a striking phrase from your evidence, a pairing built on juxtaposition, or a short quotation. The part after the colon names the subject plainly, so a reader who does not get the hook still knows what the essay covers. A quotation title works like a one-line epigraph: quote a phrase the essay actually analyzes, keep it short, and copy it exactly.
Puns are the riskiest formula. They work when the wordplay points at your argument and the subtitle explains it. They fail when the joke is the only idea in the title, or when the topic is serious and the pun makes it sound flippant.
Titles for different types of essays
What the title should signal depends on the kind of essay. An argumentative essay needs your position in it. A narrative essay usually reads better with an image than with the lesson spelled out.
| Essay type | The title should signal | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Essay typeArgumentative | The title should signalYour position, not just the topic | ExampleParking Minimums Make Housing More Expensive |
| Essay typeExpository | The title should signalThe subject and the process or angle you explain | ExampleHow a Bill Dies in Committee |
| Essay typeLiterary analysis | The title should signalThe work and your reading of it | ExampleThe Locked Room: Secrecy and Shame in Jane Eyre |
| Essay typeCompare and contrast | The title should signalBoth subjects and the point of comparing them | ExampleTwo Kinds of Ambition: Macbeth and Victor Frankenstein |
| Essay typeRhetorical analysis | The title should signalThe text and the move you analyze | ExampleUnfinished Work: How the Gettysburg Address Recasts the War's Purpose |
| Essay typeNarrative or personal | The title should signalA person, place or moment, not the moral | ExampleThe Night Shift at Rosa's Bakery |
| Essay typeReflective | The title should signalThe experience and what it changed | ExampleLearning to Say “I Don't Know”: A Year of Peer Tutoring |
| Essay typeResearch paper | The title should signalThe exact scope; a subtitle is normal | ExampleClicking “Agree”: How Teenagers Read Privacy Policies in Free Mobile Games |
Application essays are the exception. Many portals give you a text box with no title field, and a title there is optional. If you add one, keep it short and concrete, and check whether the portal counts it toward the word limit.
How to come up with a title, step by step
- Use a working title while you draft
Give the file a plain working title such as "group chats and arguing" and move on. It keeps you on topic without stealing time from the argument. If you started from an essay outline, your thesis is already sitting at the top of it.
- Mine your thesis and conclusion
Copy your thesis below the draft and underline the nouns and verbs that carry the argument. Read your conclusion too. It often states the point more sharply than the introduction, because by the time you wrote it you knew what you thought.
- Write ten versions in different shapes
Use the formulas: one statement, one question, one two-part title, one with a phrase from your evidence. Do not judge them yet. The first few will be labels. The useful ones tend to come once the obvious words are used up.
- Make every word specific
Replace "society" with who, "effects" with which effect, "literature" with the book. Cut openers like "An Analysis of", "A Look at" and "Essay on". APA's guidance asks for titles without abbreviations or words that serve no purpose, and that is good advice in any style.
- Test it on a reader
Show a classmate only the title and ask what they think the essay argues. If they cannot guess the topic, it is too clever. If they cannot guess your position, the subtitle needs work. Then read the title with your first paragraph: the opening hook should add something, not repeat the title word for word.
Capitalization: APA, MLA and Chicago
All three major styles put essay titles in title case. Capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and every major word: nouns, pronouns, verbs (including short ones like Is and Be), adjectives and adverbs. The styles split on short words, mostly prepositions, so check which style guide your class uses.
| Word | APA (7th ed.) | MLA (9th ed.) | Chicago (18th ed.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordFirst word of the title or subtitle | APA (7th ed.)Capitalize | MLA (9th ed.)Capitalize | Chicago (18th ed.)Capitalize |
| WordNouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs | APA (7th ed.)Capitalize | MLA (9th ed.)Capitalize | Chicago (18th ed.)Capitalize |
| Worda, an, the | APA (7th ed.)Lowercase | MLA (9th ed.)Lowercase | Chicago (18th ed.)Lowercase |
| Wordand, but, or | APA (7th ed.)Lowercase | MLA (9th ed.)Lowercase | Chicago (18th ed.)Lowercase |
| WordShort prepositions: in, of, on, to, for | APA (7th ed.)Lowercase | MLA (9th ed.)Lowercase | Chicago (18th ed.)Lowercase |
| WordFour-letter prepositions: with, from, into | APA (7th ed.)Capitalize | MLA (9th ed.)Lowercase | Chicago (18th ed.)Lowercase |
| WordLonger prepositions: about, after, between | APA (7th ed.)Capitalize | MLA (9th ed.)Lowercase | Chicago (18th ed.)Capitalize |
- APA: Learning With Our Hands: The Case for Shop Class After Middle School
- MLA: Learning with Our Hands: The Case for Shop Class after Middle School
- Chicago: Learning with Our Hands: The Case for Shop Class After Middle School
- Sentence case, if your instructor asks for it: Learning with our hands: The case for shop class after middle school
Titles of other works inside your title
Format a title inside your title exactly as you would in the body of the essay. Italicize books, plays, films and periodicals. Put poems, short stories, articles and chapters in quotation marks. For example: Saying No: Refusal in “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Jane Eyre. Your own title gets neither treatment.
Where the title goes on the page
| Style | Title page | How the title looks |
|---|---|---|
| StyleMLA | Title pageNone unless your instructor asks. The title is centered on page 1, under the header with your name, instructor, course and date | How the title looksTitle case, plain text: no bold, italics, underlining or quotation marks |
| StyleAPA | Title pageYes. Centered, three or four lines below the top of the page, then repeated at the top of the first page of text | How the title looksTitle case, bold |
| StyleChicago | Title pageUsually. Centered about a third of the way down the page, with a subtitle on the next line after the colon | How the title looksHeadline-style title case |
Common essay title mistakes
Most weak titles fail in one of a few ways: they label instead of tell, repeat the prompt, or promise more than the essay delivers.
| Weak | Better | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| WeakEnglish Essay #2 | BetterWhy Victor Frankenstein Never Names His Creature | The fixNames the subject and the question |
| WeakFrankenstein | BetterThe Creature Learns to Read: Education in Frankenstein | The fixYour title, not the book's |
| WeakCompare and Contrast Two Characters in Macbeth | BetterTwo Kinds of Guilt: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth | The fixAnswers the prompt instead of repeating it |
| WeakClimate Change | BetterRising Water, Rising Rent: Flood Risk and Housing in Coastal Towns | The fixNarrows a topic to an argument |
| WeakAn Analysis of the Effects of Social Media on Society | BetterHow Group Chats Changed the Way Teenagers Argue | The fixCuts filler and vague nouns |
| WeakYou Won't Believe What This Poem Is Really About | Better“Nevermore” as an Answer: Despair in “The Raven” | The fixStates the reading instead of teasing it |
| WeakTHE CASE FOR LATER SCHOOL START TIMES. | BetterThe Case for Later School Start Times | The fixTitle case, no final period |
One more test catches the subtle version of the last mistake: does the essay deliver everything the title promises? A title that says "Why Schools Should Ban Phones" sets up a policy argument. If the essay mostly describes how students use phones, either the title or the essay needs to change, and it is usually faster to change the title.
Drafting titles in Strokes
Titles are easier to judge in a list, so keep your candidates at the top of the draft and delete the losers before you submit. In Strokes, select a candidate and press ⌘K to ask for a change in place, such as "more specific, under ten words, keep the novel's title". The AI Assistant opens beside the document and can read the whole essay, so you can ask whether your title promises more than the essay argues. Check your course's policy on AI help first, and treat any suggestion as raw material. Version history keeps earlier drafts if you change your mind overnight, and the finished essay exports to Word or PDF for submission.
Frequently asked questions
Does an essay need a title?
Most class essays do, and the MLA, APA and Chicago formats all include one. Timed exams and some application portals are exceptions: if the form has no title field, a title is optional. When the assignment does not say, add one.
Should an essay title be bold, italicized or in quotation marks?
Never italicized or in quotation marks. In MLA it is plain text. In APA it is bold, both on the title page and at the top of the first page of text. Only the titles of other works inside your title get italics or quotation marks.
How long should an essay title be?
Neither MLA nor APA sets a word count. APA asks for a focused, succinct title without abbreviations or words that serve no purpose. For a class essay, aim for one line. A two-part research title can run to two.
Which words are not capitalized in an essay title?
In APA, MLA and Chicago, lowercase a, an and the, short prepositions such as in, of, on and to, and the conjunctions and, but and or, unless the word starts the title or the subtitle. APA capitalizes every word of four letters or more, MLA lowercases prepositions of any length, and Chicago capitalizes prepositions of five letters or more.
Can an essay title be a question?
Yes, if the essay answers it. Questions suit research and expository essays. Avoid questions with an obvious yes or no answer, and end the title with a question mark, not a period.
