Short stories are usually in quotes in MLA. This helps to distinguish them from longer works. It's a standard formatting rule in MLA for clarity and consistency.
In MLA, short stories aren't italicized. Instead, they are enclosed in quotation marks to distinguish them. This is a standard convention followed in academic writing using the MLA format.
When analyzing themes in MLA books and short stories, there are significant differences. Books usually have more space to develop a wide range of themes. They can build on different aspects of a theme over the course of many chapters. For short stories, they often present a single, dominant theme in a more condensed form. For instance, a book could explore the theme of identity through different characters' experiences across the whole plot. A short story, on the other hand, might quickly introduce a character and use their brief story to convey a specific aspect of identity, like how a person's past shapes their present identity in just a few pages.
When it comes to MLA citation, books and short stories have some notable distinctions. With books, the focus is mainly on the author, the title of the book, the publisher, and the year of publication. However, short stories are a different case. In addition to the author and the title of the short story, one must also include the title of the collection in which the story is found, the publisher of that collection, and the publication year of the collection. This is because a short story is part of a larger work, and all these elements are necessary to accurately identify and cite it within the MLA framework.
For MLA formatting, it's common to italicize short stories. This helps distinguish them from the surrounding text and follows the standard conventions.
In MLA format, short stories are usually italicized. This helps distinguish them from other types of works within your citation and makes it clear what kind of source you're referring to.