The "title of container" applies only if the source you are citing is a part of a larger work. Examples of sources that have containers are articles or information from a website.
An article would have a title of container in its citation because the title of the article itself would be the title of source, while the title of the periodical it is published in would be the title of container. For example, if you are citing an article from The New York Times titled "The Hunt for an Alaskan Bumblebee" the title of the source is "The Hunt for an Alaskan Bumblee," while The New York Times is referred to as the title of the container.
In the case of a website, you may find a webpage that has information specific to your research. You would cite the title of the page as the title of source, and the title of the whole website would be the title of container.
Whether the title is in quotes or italics depends on the nature of the source. According the the MLA Handbook, "A title is placed in quotation marks if the source is part of a larger work. A title is italicized if the source is self-contained and independent. For example, a book is a whole unto itself, and so its title is set in italics."
From:
MLA Handbook. 8th ed., The Modern Language Association of America, 2016.
|
Title in Italics |
Title in “Quotes” |
|
A book |
An article |
|
A collection of essays, stories, or poems |
An essay, story, or poem |
|
The title of a TV series |
An episode of a TV series |
|
A movie |
A song |
|
A website |
A posting, article, or page of a website |
Eggers, Dave. “The Man at the River.” The Best American Essays 2014, edited by Robert Atwan, Houghton, 2014, pp. 150-61.
Gouveia, Sidney, et al. “Forest Structure Drives Global Diversity of Primates.” Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 83, no. 6, Nov. 2014, pp. 1523-30.
Bozeman Science. “A Tour of the Cell.” YouTube, 24 Feb. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z9pqST72is.
Tett, Gillian. “Economists’ Tribal Thinking.” The Atlantic, 1 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/economists-tribal-thinking/403075/
"Marge vs. the Monorail." The Simpsons, performances by Julie Kavner and Phil Hartman, season 4, episode 12, Twentieth Century Fox, 14 Jan. 1993.
Ronson, Mark. "Uptown Funk." Uptown Special, performance by Bruno Mars, RCA, 10 Nov. 2014.
Parisot, Eric. Graveyard Poetry: Religion, Aesthetics, and the Mid-Eighteenth Century Poetic Condition. Ashgate, 2013. EBSCOhost eBook Collection, search.ebscohost.com.librus.hccs.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=573145&site=ehost-live.
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