How do I style the names of functional elements of a website when I refer to them in my prose?
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.
In its online and print publications, when the MLA refers in prose to the label or functional element of a website or other electronic device (like a phone), it usually styles the label without quotation marks and capitalizes it like a title:
To change your institutional affiliation, go to Update Your Profile.
Select Save My Vote and Continue to move to the next screen.
To stop receiving calls from someone, hit Block This Caller.
On our website, a link containing a page title or header is styled the same way:
Calls can be viewed on the Calls for Papers page.
But in a print publication, our normal rules for styling titles applies, and so a page title is referred to using quotation marks:
Calls can be viewed on the “Calls for Papers” page.