Refer to specific section handle when querying an element by 'getCriteria' I can do the following to pull out the page title after parsing in just the page slug:

$page = 'about';
$entry = craft()-&gt;elements-&gt;getCriteria(ElementType::Entry)-&gt;first();
$entry-&gt;slug = $page;
echo $entry-&gt;title;


(I understand this is overkill, but an answer to this question will help me answer further questions I dare not try to explain here). 

The problem is, the slug doesn't need to be unique if other sections/channels/singles use the same name, and the method above only calls out the first instance of "about". 

How can I define what section is being referred to?

This will update the handle, but has no effect on the output:

$entry-&gt;section-&gt;handle = "pages";


This returns a Read Only error: 

$entry-&gt;section = "Pages"



  Property "Craft\EntryModel.section" is read only.
You've got a couple of incorrect things going on in your current example.

Calling craft()-&gt;elements-&gt;getCriteria(ElementType::Entry) returns an ElementCriteriaModel.

That's what you want to set the parameters on for the entries you're searching for. Stuart sums it up well here.

By calling -&gt;first() on it immediately, you're going to get the defaults, which for entries is by post date in descending order.

By calling:

$entry-&gt;slug = $page;
echo $entry-&gt;title;


You are actually updating the slug for the entry that was returned to be something new.

This should work for what you're trying to do:

    $criteria = craft()-&gt;elements-&gt;getCriteria(ElementType::Entry);
    $criteria-&gt;slug = 'about';
    $criteria-&gt;section = 'news';
    $entry = $criteria-&gt;first();
    $title = $entry-&gt;title;