What pronoun should I use if I do not know the gender identity of the person I am writing about?
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
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
Writers sometimes cause confusion by failing to make the elements in their writing parallel . . . 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
In our editing, we often note that writers misuse titles in three key ways . . . Read More
You can express a number range using words (“from . . . to”): The party will take place from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Or you can… Read More
In your works-cited-list entry, provide the name of a foreign institution in the original language if that is how it is presented in your source. Read More
A simple principle applies for what seems like a thorny issue: Nest punctuation that appears within punctuation by alternating punctuation marks to disambiguate–in this case,… Read More