No. As the MLA Handbook advises, “Unless indicated in square brackets or parentheses, changes must not be made in the spelling, capitalization, or interior punctuation of… Read More
Since you should never begin a sentence with a numeral, you should first try to reword the sentence. If you find it unwieldy to reorder… Read More
As section 3.2.1 of the MLA Handbook explains, when you need to shorten a title for a parenthetical citation, “give the first noun and any preceding… Read More
Do not use a pronoun in such cases. If a last name is given, repeat the person’s last name on subsequent mentions in your paper. Read More
MLA style spells out the names of centuries in prose and in titles of English-language works, even when the title page uses a numeral: Queen… Read More
No. For more on when to include and omit commas, see our post. Read More
Do not routinely capitalize the names of dog breeds. Many breed names are composed of proper nouns that you capitalize and generic terms (like retriever… Read More
If a direct question contained in a sentence is long or has internal punctuation, set the question off with a comma and begin it with a capital… Read More
Style the name of a fictional character just as you would the name of a person: capitalize the initial letter of each name. Do not… Read More
As the MLA Handbook notes, “[W]hen an entire paragraph is based on material from a single source,” you might “define a source in the text at the… Read More