Citing Titles in APA: Book vs Article Formatting

APA uses sentence case for the work being cited and title case for the container that holds it. An article title is sentence case; the journal it appeared in is title case. A chapter is sentence case; the edited book is title case. Once you see the entry as work-inside-container, the rule stops looking arbitrary.

This applies only inside the reference list. The same title named in your running text takes ordinary APA title case.

The Work and the Container

The one row that surprises people: an edited book title is sentence case, because the book is still a work rather than a periodical. Only periodical names – journals, magazines, newspapers – keep title case.

Worked Examples

Journal article

Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.

The article title is sentence case, with "A" capitalized after the question mark. The journal name is title case and italic.

Whole book

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sentence case and italics. The publisher name keeps its own capitalization as a proper noun.

Chapter in an edited book

Chen, W. (2020). Attention in noisy environments. In A. Ruiz & L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of applied cognition (pp. 121–148). Academic Press.

Both the chapter and the book are sentence case; only the book is italicized.

The same article named in your text

Brysbaert's How Many Words Do We Read per Minute? A Review and Meta-Analysis of Reading Rate reports a mean of 238 words per minute.

Now it is title case, because it is running prose rather than a reference entry. Note "per" stays lowercase at three letters while "Meta-Analysis" capitalizes both hyphenated elements.

What Sentence Case Does Not Lowercase

Sentence case is not "make everything lowercase". Four categories keep their capitals:

• The first word of the title.
• The first word after a colon, a dash, or end punctuation inside the title.
• Proper nouns – people, places, organizations, brand names, languages.
• Acronyms and initialisms – ADHD, BDNF, COVID-19, fMRI.

If you are converting a title you already wrote in title case, the sentence case converter handles the mechanical part and leaves recognised acronyms alone – but read the result for proper nouns, which no tool can infer reliably.

Four Errors That Cost Marks

For the difference between the two cases in general – not just in APA – see Title Case vs Sentence Case. For headings inside the paper itself, see APA heading levels.

Frequently Asked Questions