How do I cite a quotation that I use in the title of my paper?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

If you include a quotation in the title of your paper, you should discuss the quotation in the body of your essay. Do not place a parenthetical citation or an endnote with source information after the title. Instead, cite the quotation where it occurs in your essay.

For example, in the March 2017 issue of PMLA, Heather Love’s essay is titled “‘Critique Is Ordinary.’” The quotation in the title is repeated in the text, along with the source of the quotation and a page number. Publication details for the source are given, as always, in the works-cited-list:

In The Limits of Critique, Felski adapts a famous dictum of Raymond Williams’s to argue that “critique is ordinary” (139).

Work Cited

Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. U of Chicago P, 2015.