If the title of the poem were "apple and trees," would it be best to write it as "[A]pple and trees," or is there a preferred method?
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Possible duplicate of Which words in a title should be capitalized? – Mari-Lou A Jun 26 '18 at 06:18
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I suspect that many people would regard the capitalization of the titles of poems by e e cummings to be an atrocity. – Hot Licks Jun 06 '21 at 13:34
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Related: Is the book title “God versus gods” grammatically incorrect?. – jsw29 Jun 06 '21 at 18:01
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The MLA Handbook (8th ed.) 1.2 Titles of Sources (emphasis mine):
Whenever you use the title of a source in your writing, take the title from an authoritative location in the work, not, for example, from the cover or top of a page. Copy the title without reproducing any unusual typography, such as special capitalization or lowercasing of all letters.
In other words, MLA says to ignore the unusual lowercasing and present it as you would any other title.
In this case, the title would be cited as Apples and Trees.
Jason Bassford
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