Correcting & Clarifying Titles

3 May 2014

If you add words to a publication's title, to clarify it, you should place the addition or correction in square editorial brackets. In the first example below, a place was added because neither the book’s title nor its place of publication gives a clue to the location of the “Public Records Office.” In the second example, a typo on the title page is corrected by placing the missing letter in square editorial brackets.

  1. Stella Cohn, Across the Centuries: Discovering the Past in The National Archives [London] (Gloucester, Mass.: Tutworth, 1999), 66.
  2. May B. Wright, Smuggling in Old Abilen[e], Texas (Abilene: Quill Press, 2009), 23.

EE 12.21-12.28 offers other insights into the handling of publication titles that have problems.