Book Titles In Quotes Or Italics

What you may not know however is when to use which one.

Book titles in quotes or italics. Titles of large stand alone works such as books plays newspapers magazines movies and epic poems are italicized. Instead you can use quotation marks to emphasize these smaller pieces of work. If it is something handwritten you should underline it instead of using italics.

This usually means italicizing the title or placing it in quote marks. For example if you have the title of a poem that appears within the title of a chapter you would use single quotation marks within double quotation marks. As a writer you know that titles are distinguished from surrounding text with italics and quotation marks.

Quotation marks when the work is part of a stand alone work. Charles dickens famous novel for example would be written as great expectations if it were named in an essay. Titles of books that form a larger body of work may be put in quotation marks if the name of the book series is italicized.

The general rule is to use italics on book titles album titles and publication names for a web document or when you are using a word processing tool. If we didn t know this we might guess from the capitalization but most style guides also recommend using distinct formatting for titles. How to emphasize book titles.

When you come across a title within a title use quotation marks or italics as normal. According to the chicago manual of style and the modern language association titles of books and other complete works such as newspapers and magazines should be italicized. Quotes within quotes employ single quotes and italics within italics revert back to non italicized text.

So if abiding by either of those guides you d italicize stephen king s the shining just as you would vanity fair and the miami herald and appetite for destruction if your protagonist is a guns n roses fan. Longer works italics titles of longer works such as books or tv shows are usually italicized. This is the same rule for titles of episodes of shows.