Available for preorder, the Manual MLA offers comprehensive guidance on all elements of MLA style for writers of research papers and other academic projects in Spanish. For titles in all languages, the Manual recommends the use of italics or quotation marks for different types of works following existing principles of MLA style and provides a wealth of examples of Spanish-language sources (2.83–2.87).
Spanish-language titles differ from English-language titles primarily in capitalization: we recommend capitalizing the first letter of a title and the first letter of a subtitle of a nonperiodical work in Spanish (2.74). In titles of periodical publications, such as scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers, every significant word (that is, every word except conjunctions and prepositions) is capitalized (2.75).
Mil hojas: Formas contemporáneas de la literatura (a book)
Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana (a journal)
“La biblioteca de Babel” (a short story)
The Manual also addresses mixed-language titles—titles that contain titles, quotations, or terms in other languages. Titles within titles—as in the first example below, where an English title appears within a Spanish title—are capitalized according to the rules for the language of the internal title. But for quoted text or words in a language other than that of the external title, as in the second and third examples, the rules for the language of the external title govern the styling of the quoted text or words (2.92–2.95).
“Cine, teatro y poesía en The Crying of Lot 49”
“‘¿Qué Pasó, Hombre?’: The Long Night of White Chickens and Dracula”
La road movie y la counter-road movie en América Latina: Una modernidad ambivalente
The Manual MLA also includes guidance specific to Spanish-language titles on punctuation, shortened forms in parenthetical citations, and double titles (or alternative titles, joined by o). Learn all about these and other aspects of MLA style in Spanish in the Manual MLA. And we want to hear from you! Submit your question to Ask the MLA.
Work Cited
Manual MLA. Translated and adapted by Conxita Domènech and Andrés Lema-Hincapié, Modern Language Association of America, 2025.