Do I italicize or put quotation marks around a description in MLA?

No. The Style Center (19 March 2025) says to capitalize the description sentence-style and not italicize it or enclose it in quotation marks. The official magazine example is Karasik, Paul. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2008, p. 49. If the description contains another title, that embedded title keeps its own italics or quotation marks.

How do I cite a social media post that has no title?

A post with words is not untitled. APA italicizes its first 20 words (the official 17 May 2024 Obama Brown v. Board post stops at outlawing). MLA puts the text in quotation marks. Chicago quotes up to the first 280 characters (the official NASA Webb 11 July 2022 note). Only a post with no text at all gets a description, and that line should be labelled as a template unless you have the real permalink in front of you.

How do I cite unpublished raw data with no title in APA?

Use the official Baer string: Baer, R. A. (2015). [Unpublished raw data on the correlations between the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills]. University of Kentucky. Cite it as (Baer, 2015). If the files have a title, italicize that title and add [Unpublished raw data] after it, as in the Oregon Youth Authority pattern on the dataset guide.

Can I use the file name as the title of an image?

Only if it is a genuine descriptive title the creator or repository assigned, such as a museum catalog title. A camera-generated name like IMG_4471.jpg identifies nothing and should be replaced with a description. When in doubt, describe what the image shows and where it comes from.

How do I cite a work actually titled Untitled?

Treat Untitled as the title, because that is what the artist called it. APA writes Untitled [Painting] with the medium in brackets; MLA italicizes Untitled like any artwork title; Chicago italicizes it and adds the year, medium, and accession number when the museum gives one. Reserve a description for works that have no title at all, including no Untitled.

Is a syllabus untitled in MLA?

Yes. The Style Center (9 February 2022) says a syllabus is treated as an untitled work. Write Syllabus for Social Networking in the Scriptorium., not a quoted invented headline. If you know who composed it, that person is the author; if the author is not the instructor, name the instructor after Taught by.

Do Chicago notes list every untitled letter in the bibliography?

Usually no. Identify the letter in the note and list the collection once in the bibliography: Abraham Lincoln Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. The same collection-level rule covers Ballard's diary. Give an item its own bibliography line only when you are writing a source-driven project that the instructor asked to itemize.

How to Cite an Untitled Source in APA 7, MLA 9, and Chicago 18 [2026]

How to Cite a Source with No Title: Quick Answer

Find a catalog title, a subject line, a caption, or the work's own first words before you write a description. After that search fails, APA 7 replaces the title with a bracketed description, MLA 9 writes a plain sentence-case description, and Chicago 18 runs a roman phrase into the note—or quotes the post. Do not italicize a description. Do not put it in quotation marks. Do not treat a camera filename as a title.

Official APA 7 Table 9.1, then MLA and Chicago templates

APA 7 official table, title missing:

Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source.

APA 7 official in-text table:

(Author, year)

APA 7 official table, author and title missing:

[Description of work]. (Date). Source.

APA 7 official in-text, author and title missing:

([Description of work], year)

MLA 9 works cited:

Author. Description of the work. Year. Container, URL.

MLA 9 in-text:

(Author) — or (Description of the work) when there is no author

Chicago 18 note:

1. Author Name, description of the work, Month Day, Year, Repository.

Chicago 18 bibliography:

Often the collection, not the untitled item. See the Lincoln and Ballard examples below.

Look for a title before you write a description

A work with no title on its face often has one somewhere else. Descriptions are a fallback for works that were never titled, not for titles you did not find. Check these places first.

The catalog or collection record. A museum, archive, or stock library usually assigns a title or a caption, and that assigned title is citable even if the artist gave none.
The file name or the alt text of an online image. If it is a descriptive caption the creator or repository assigned, some instructors accept it. A camera serial such as IMG_4471.jpg is not a title.
The subject line of an email. In APA, MLA, and Chicago the subject line is the title. A letter without a subject is identified by writer, recipient, and date.
The text of a social media post. APA uses the first 20 words as the title; MLA puts the post's words in quotation marks; Chicago quotes up to about 280 characters. Only a post with no words needs a description.
The heading printed above a table, chart, or map in the source document. That heading is the title of the figure.

If a work was deliberately titled Untitled, that is its title. Italicize it as you would any artwork title and add the medium in the usual way: in APA, *Untitled* [Painting]; in Chicago, *Untitled*, 1968, oil on canvas. A description is only for works that have neither a real title nor that word as a title.

APA 7: describe the work in square brackets

Table 9.1 in the Publication Manual (p. 284) and the APA Style missing reference information page give the rule in one line: when there is no title, describe the work in square brackets in the title position, then give the source. The Alamo Colleges reprint (still current on 29 May 2026) copies that table. The brackets signal that the words are yours. The description is not italicized. A period follows the closing bracket. Make the description specific enough that a reader could recognize the work: [Photograph series of a boy who finds his footing after abuse by those he trusted], not [Photograph].

APA 7 Table 9.1, title row (Alamo reprint of the Publication Manual)

Official solution:

Provide the author and date, describe the work in square brackets, and then provide the source.

Official reference template:

Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source.

Official in-text templates:

(Author, year) Author (year)

Untitled photograph: the official Rinaldi series

Section 10.14 covers visual works. When a photograph has a title, italicize that title and add [Photograph]. When it does not, the bracketed description replaces the title. You do not add a second medium bracket. The official untitled series is Jessica Rinaldi's 2016 Pulitzer-winning work; the APA Style artwork pattern and university reprints keep this string. The Pulitzer winner page is still live.

APA 7 §10.14, official untitled photograph series

Reference:

Rinaldi, J. (2016). [Photograph series of a boy who finds his footing after abuse by those he trusted]. The Pulitzer Prizes. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jessica-rinaldi

Parenthetical:

(Rinaldi, 2016)

Narrative:

Rinaldi (2016)

The Alamo artwork reprint states the untitled rule in one sentence:

Alamo reprint of APA Style artwork guidance

For untitled artwork, include a description in square brackets in place of a title.

No title and no author: the official museum plaque

When the author is also missing, Table 9.1 moves the bracketed description into the author position. Keep the brackets in the in-text citation; they are how the reader matches the sentence to the entry. The official worked case is not an invented archival photograph. It is the informational plaque next to Grant Wood's American Gothic, reprinted on the Alamo artwork page:

APA 7 official museum-plaque example (no author, no title, no date)

Reference:

[Plaque with background information about American Gothic]. (n.d.). Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.

Parenthetical:

([Plaque with background information about American Gothic], n.d.)

Narrative:

[Plaque with background information about American Gothic] (n.d.)

Alamo's note on that example is the combining rule students miss: describe the plaque, not the painting; use the plaque's date, or n.d. if the plaque is undated; and prefer a retrievable primary source when the plaque only restates one. The missing-information table lets an APA reference carry a bracketed description, n.d., and no author all at once.

Unpublished raw data

Raw data is the clearest case of a work that never had a title. APA's data set references page and §10.9 describe untitled files in brackets, starting with the words Unpublished raw data, and name the institution that holds them. The official untitled example is Baer (2015). A titled unpublished file—Oregon Youth Authority's Recidivism outcomes—keeps its italic title and adds [Unpublished raw data] after it. Do not put a bracketed description on data that already has a title. Both strings, and the published-versus-unpublished trap, are on how to cite a dataset in APA.

APA 7 §10.9, official unpublished raw data (untitled)

Reference:

Baer, R. A. (2015). [Unpublished raw data on the correlations between the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills]. University of Kentucky.

Parenthetical:

(Baer, 2015)

Narrative:

Baer (2015)

Untitled archival letter

APA has no dedicated archival chapter. The archival documents page puts a description in square brackets when the item has no title. University APA 7 reprints keep Lawrence K. Frank's 4 February 1935 letter at the Rockefeller Archive Center as the official worked example:

APA 7 official archival letter (description in place of a title)

Reference:

Frank, L. K. (1935, February 4). [Letter to Robert M. Ogden]. Rockefeller Archive Center (GEB Series 1.3, Box 371, Folder 3877), Tarrytown, NY, United States.

Parenthetical:

(Frank, 1935)

Section 10.15 does not treat a captioned post as a missing-title case. Use the first 20 words of the post as the italic title, keep the original spelling, capitalization, hashtags, and emojis, then add a bracketed description of any attached media ([Photograph], [Video], [Post]). Count a URL, a hashtag, or an emoji as one word. Do not write an ellipsis after the twentieth word; official examples simply stop. The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples Guide reprints the current official X post:

APA 7 §10.15, official captioned post (not a missing-title case)

Reference (first 20 words, then the post type):

Obama, B. [@BarackObama]. (2024, May 17). Today marks 70 years since the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing [Post]. X. https://x.com/BarackObama/status/1791540592238874953

Parenthetical:

(Obama, 2024)

Only a post with no words at all gets a bracketed description in place of the title. Label the next line as a template: inventing a National Park Service Instagram URL would be worse than showing the pattern.

Template only — image-only post with no caption

Reference template:

Author, A. A. [@handle]. (Year, Month Day). [Photograph of what the image shows]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/xxxxx/

In-text:

(Author, Year)

Handles, comments, highlights, and the official Philadelphia Museum of Art Instagram photograph are on how to cite social media in APA. That 3 December 2019 post has a caption, so it is another first-20-words title, not a description.

How the missing pieces combine

Table 9.1 is a grid, not a single substitution. Pair this page with no author and no date instead of guessing.

APA 7 Table 9.1 rows that involve a missing title, from the Alamo reprint of the Publication Manual.
What is missing	Reference template	In-text
Title	Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source.	(Author, year)
Author and title	[Description of work]. (Date). Source.	([Description of work], year)
Date and title	Author. (n.d.). [Description of work]. Source.	(Author, n.d.)
Author, date, and title	[Description of work]. (n.d.). Source.	([Description of work], n.d.)

MLA 9: a plain description in place of the title

MLA Handbook §5.28 says that when a work has no title, you provide a brief description in its place. The Style Center course-materials note (19 March 2025) restates the styling rule that students reverse:

MLA Style Center, 19 March 2025

capitalize the description sentence-style—that is, capitalizing only the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns—and do not italicize it or enclose it in quotation marks.

If the description mentions the title of another work, that embedded title keeps its own italics or quotation marks. The description itself still gets none.

Untitled objects and magazine images

The handbook's furniture example and the Style Center's magazine cartoon are the two official untitled-object strings. The caption form of the chair appears on the parenthetical-and-caption note (5 January 2017; eighth-edition banner, same description rule in the ninth). The cartoon is the Style Center's published demonstration for an untitled image in a periodical.

MLA 9 official untitled objects

Works cited, handbook furniture example:

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie. Chair of stained oak. 1897–1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Style Center caption form of the same chair:

Fig. 1. Charles Rennie Mackintosh; chair of stained oak; 1897–1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Works cited, Style Center cartoon:

Karasik, Paul. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2008, p. 49.

In-text:

(Mackintosh); (Karasik)

Note the punctuation fork. An object seen in the museum follows the description with a comma, then the date and location. A cartoon reproduced in a magazine puts the magazine in italics as a container. Both follow how to cite artwork in MLA. Cartoon. is roman because it is a description, not a title the artist printed on the drawing.

Untitled cards in a digital archive

The Style Center digital-archives note (25 April 2018) is the official case of an item that never had a formal title. Pennsylvania Civil War veterans' cards share a URL ten at a time, so the description plus an item number is what lets a reader find the card:

MLA Style Center, untitled veterans' card

Works cited:

Civil war veterans’ card for William Gant. Pennsylvania State Archives, www.digitalarchives.state.pa.us/archive.asp?view=ArchiveItems&ArchiveID=17&FL=G&FID=1185185&LID=1185234. Item 6.

In-text:

(Civil war veterans’ card)

A syllabus is an untitled work

The Style Center is explicit: a syllabus is treated as an untitled work (9 February 2022). The description begins Syllabus for and then the course name. Do not invent a quoted title such as "Introduction to American Literature Syllabus."

MLA Style Center official syllabus descriptions

Instructor as author:

Mueller, Alex. Syllabus for Social Networking in the Scriptorium. Spring 2014, U of Massachusetts, Boston.

Known author who is not the instructor:

Kelly, Michaela. Syllabus for English Literature before 1600. Taught by Eva Wilder, fall 2021, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Author unknown:

Syllabus for Social Networking in the Scriptorium. Taught by Alex Mueller, spring 2014, U of Massachusetts, Boston.

Style Center rule:

A syllabus is treated as an untitled work, and you should therefore provide a description of the work in place of a title.

LMS files, slide images, and the notes-versus-presentation fork are on how to cite course materials in MLA.

MLA, like APA, uses the words of a post as its title, in quotation marks, and shortens a long post to its first few words followed by an ellipsis. A post with no words is described instead. The Style Center template note that this page locks is the one already used on the social-media guide:

MLA Style Center template rule

Omit any element that does not apply except Title of Source. If no title is given, use your own description of the work as the title.

Worked captioned posts—Gladwell, Chang, Fogarty—belong on how to cite social media in MLA. An image-only post uses a sentence-case description such as Photograph of the object the image shows., with no quotation marks.

In-text citations for untitled works

MLA parentheticals point to the first element of the entry. With an author, that is the surname. With no author, the description takes the author's place: use the description, or its first few words if it is long, in plain text with no quotation marks and no italics. The Gant card above is cited (Civil war veterans’ card). Add a page number only when the source has one.

Chicago 18: a descriptive phrase, or quote the post

Chicago treats a missing title the way it treats an untitled letter or an artwork you identify in running text: it supplies a descriptive phrase in roman type, without quotation marks or italics, and capitalizes it as a sentence. In a note the phrase runs on from the author's name after a comma and stays lowercase; in a bibliography it begins with a capital and ends with a period. The University of Queensland CMOS 18 artwork page restates the current handbook rule, including the §14.133 URL:

CMOS 18 artwork rule, as restated by UQ

Information about paintings, photographs, sculptures, or other works of art can usually be presented in the text rather than in a note or bibliography.

If a note or bibliography entry is needed, list the artist, a title (in italics), and a date of creation or completion, followed by information about the medium and the location of the work.

CMOS 18 What’s New, §14.133:

Museum accession numbers should be included in citations of artworks when they are available.

If the photograph had a title, that title would be italicized and capitalized headline-style. If it does not, write a roman description instead of inventing italics. Do not put the description in quotation marks; Chicago reserves those for articles, chapters, and other short works. A labelled template is safer than a fabricated barn photograph:

Template only — untitled photograph in a note

Note template:

1. Firstname Lastname, description of the photograph in roman type, Year, Museum or Repository, Accession No. if given, https://xxxxx.

Bibliography template (optional for artworks):

Lastname, Firstname. Description of the photograph in roman type. Year. Museum or Repository.

Untitled letters: identify writer, recipient, and date

Manuscript collections are where untitled sources are the rule. Chicago's notes identify a letter by writer, recipient, and date, then give the collection and repository. The bibliography usually lists the collection as a whole. Abraham Lincoln's 22 August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley is a real document in the Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln Papers (item mal4233400). The LOC record is a newspaper clipping of the letter, not Lincoln's outgoing manuscript. Cite the object you used. The next lines are constructed from that catalog record, not a CMOS sample:

Chicago 18, constructed from the Library of Congress record

Note:

Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Series 2, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4233400/.

Shortened note:

Lincoln to Greeley, 22 August 1862.

Bibliography (collection level):

Abraham Lincoln Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Box-and-folder numbers belong in the note only when the catalog gives them. An earlier draft of a related page attached Jefferson's 27 June 1813 letter to a box that is not on the public LOC record. If the catalog is silent, omit the container. The full pattern is on how to cite archival sources in Chicago.

A diary entry is a description

A diary entry is not a quoted title. CMOS wants a roman phrase such as diary, 1785–1812. Martha Ballard's diary is a real holding at the Maine State Library, Augusta, call number Ms B B189. DoHistory still states that the original two bound volumes are there. If you read Ulrich's book instead, cite the book.

Chicago 18, real diary identified by a description

Note (manuscript, from the library catalog):

Martha Ballard, diary, 1785–1812, Ms B B189, Maine State Library, Augusta, ME.

Bibliography if you used the manuscript or scan:

Ballard, Martha. Diary, 1785–1812. Ms B B189. Maine State Library, Augusta, ME.

The live Notes and Bibliography guide is explicit about the title slot on a social post:

CMOS 18 Quick Guide, §14.106

In place of a title, quote up to the first 280 characters of the post. Comments are cited in reference to the original post.

Official note:

NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb), “👀 Sneak a peek at the deepest & sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken—all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally, capturing it took less than a day!),” Twitter (now X), July 11, 2022, https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1546621080298835970.

A comment has no title of its own. The Quick Guide cites it against the original post: Michelle (Reno), December 15, 2023, comment on Blum, “Flax Seeds.” Personal messages stay in the note only, as in the official Gomez line. Those patterns, including @potus and the Facebook-without-handle case, are on how to cite social media in Chicago.

Author-date

Author-date style moves the year after the name and otherwise keeps the same description. A published or online untitled work gets a reference-list entry and a normal (Name Year) citation. Archival material is usually cited in the text by collection, with the collection in the reference list, because a single letter rarely needs its own entry. The Author-Date guide follows that practice.

Chicago 18 author-date, collection-level archival letter

Reference list:

Abraham Lincoln Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

In-text, letter cited by collection:

(Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers)

Quick comparison

How each style formats a description in place of a missing title. Official strings stay in the example boxes above.
Decision	APA 7	MLA 9	Chicago 18
Form of the description	Square brackets, no italics: [Description of work]	Plain text, no italics or quotation marks: Chair of stained oak.	Roman descriptive phrase, no quotation marks; or quote a social post
Capitalization	Sentence case inside the brackets	Sentence case: first word and proper nouns	Sentence case; lowercase when it runs on inside a note
Medium label	Built into the description; no second [Photograph]	Not needed; Cartoon. is the whole title element	Included in the phrase, or added after the date (oil on canvas)
Social post with text	First 20 words as the italic title, then [Post] or [Photograph]	The post's words in quotation marks, shortened with an ellipsis	Quote up to the first 280 characters in the note
Social post with no text	[Description] in place of the title	Description in plain text	Description in the note
No author either	[Description]. (Date). Source. — cited as ([Description], Date)	Description first — cited as (Description)	Description first in the note; artworks often need no bibliography entry
Raw data	[Unpublished raw data on . . .] (Baer, 2015)	Description such as Unpublished survey data.	Description in the note, with the holding institution
Letter	[Letter to Name] (Frank, 1935)	Letter to Name. Date. Collection.	Writer to recipient, date, then the collection

APA 7

Rinaldi, J. (2016). [Photograph series of a boy who finds his footing after abuse by those he trusted]. The Pulitzer Prizes. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jessica-rinaldi

Brackets mark the words as yours. In-text: (Rinaldi, 2016).

MLA 9

Karasik, Paul. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2008, p. 49.

No brackets, no quotation marks, first word capitalized. In-text: (Karasik).

Chicago 18

Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Series 2, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4233400/.

Writer, recipient, and date stand in for a title. Bibliography lists the collection.

Common mistakes

Inventing a title from the file name, the alt text, or the first words of a caption, and then formatting it as though the author gave it.
Italicizing the description. In all three styles a description is plain text; italics belong to real titles, including a work actually named Untitled.
Putting an MLA or Chicago description in quotation marks. Quotation marks say these are the author's words, and a description is yours.
Doubling the APA medium: [Photograph of a barn] [Photograph]. One bracket carries both the description and the medium. Rinaldi's entry has one pair of brackets.
Writing [Untitled] or Untitled alone. Describe the work so a reader could recognize it.
Treating a social media post as untitled when it contains words. APA uses the first 20 words; MLA quotes the text; Chicago quotes up to 280 characters.
Counting more or fewer than 20 words for an APA social title, adding an ellipsis, or fixing the spelling of the post.
Dropping the brackets from an APA in-text citation for an authorless untitled work. The official plaque citation stays ([Plaque with background information about American Gothic], n.d.).
Giving an archival letter its own Chicago bibliography entry when the collection-level entry is what Chicago expects.
Making the description vague. [Photograph] or Photograph. identifies nothing; say what the work shows, who it is for, or which item number the archive uses.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cite a source that has no title in APA 7?: Table 9.1 says: Author. (Date). [Description of work]. Source. The official untitled photograph series is Rinaldi, J. (2016). [Photograph series of a boy who finds his footing after abuse by those he trusted]. The Pulitzer Prizes. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jessica-rinaldi. The description is not italicized, and you do not add a second [Photograph] label. The in-text citation is (Rinaldi, 2016).
Do I italicize or put quotation marks around a description in MLA?: No. The Style Center (19 March 2025) says to capitalize the description sentence-style and not italicize it or enclose it in quotation marks. The official magazine example is Karasik, Paul. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2008, p. 49. If the description contains another title, that embedded title keeps its own italics or quotation marks.
How does Chicago cite an untitled letter or photograph?: Identify a letter by writer, recipient, and date, then name the collection. Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Series 2, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4233400/. The bibliography lists the collection. An untitled photograph uses a roman descriptive phrase, not italics or quotation marks, and often needs no bibliography entry at all.
How do I cite a social media post that has no title?: A post with words is not untitled. APA italicizes its first 20 words (the official 17 May 2024 Obama Brown v. Board post stops at outlawing). MLA puts the text in quotation marks. Chicago quotes up to the first 280 characters (the official NASA Webb 11 July 2022 note). Only a post with no text at all gets a description, and that line should be labelled as a template unless you have the real permalink in front of you.
What if a source has no title and no author?: Move the description into the author position. APA's official plaque is [Plaque with background information about American Gothic]. (n.d.). Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States. and is cited ([Plaque with background information about American Gothic], n.d.). MLA begins the works-cited entry with the description, as in Civil war veterans’ card for William Gant. Chicago begins the note with the description and often needs no bibliography entry for an artwork.
How do I cite unpublished raw data with no title in APA?: Use the official Baer string: Baer, R. A. (2015). [Unpublished raw data on the correlations between the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills]. University of Kentucky. Cite it as (Baer, 2015). If the files have a title, italicize that title and add [Unpublished raw data] after it, as in the Oregon Youth Authority pattern on the dataset guide.
Can I use the file name as the title of an image?: Only if it is a genuine descriptive title the creator or repository assigned, such as a museum catalog title. A camera-generated name like IMG_4471.jpg identifies nothing and should be replaced with a description. When in doubt, describe what the image shows and where it comes from.
How do I cite a work actually titled Untitled?: Treat Untitled as the title, because that is what the artist called it. APA writes Untitled [Painting] with the medium in brackets; MLA italicizes Untitled like any artwork title; Chicago italicizes it and adds the year, medium, and accession number when the museum gives one. Reserve a description for works that have no title at all, including no Untitled.
Is a syllabus untitled in MLA?: Yes. The Style Center (9 February 2022) says a syllabus is treated as an untitled work. Write Syllabus for Social Networking in the Scriptorium., not a quoted invented headline. If you know who composed it, that person is the author; if the author is not the instructor, name the instructor after Taught by.
Do Chicago notes list every untitled letter in the bibliography?: Usually no. Identify the letter in the note and list the collection once in the bibliography: Abraham Lincoln Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. The same collection-level rule covers Ballard's diary. Give an item its own bibliography line only when you are writing a source-driven project that the instructor asked to itemize.

Format the description for you

Leave the title field empty and enter a short description of the work instead. The image and artwork generators bracket it in APA, keep it plain in MLA, and run it into the note in Chicago, so you do not have to remember which style wants which punctuation.

Image citation generator →Social media citation generator →Manuscript citation generator →

How to Cite a Source with No Title: Quick Answer

Look for a title before you write a description

APA 7: describe the work in square brackets

Untitled photograph: the official Rinaldi series

No title and no author: the official museum plaque

Unpublished raw data

Untitled archival letter

Social media posts are usually not untitled

How the missing pieces combine

MLA 9: a plain description in place of the title

Untitled objects and magazine images

Untitled cards in a digital archive

A syllabus is an untitled work

Untitled social media posts in MLA

In-text citations for untitled works

Chicago 18: a descriptive phrase, or quote the post

Untitled letters: identify writer, recipient, and date

A diary entry is a description

Social media: quote the post instead of describing it

Author-date

Quick comparison

Common mistakes

Frequently asked questions

Format the description for you

Related guides and official manuals