Book Titles Underlined Or Italicized Mla

In fact most style guides including mla and chicago style require book titles to be italicized not underlined.

Book titles underlined or italicized mla. Mla titles are capitalized and appear either in italics e g. The last lectures of ralph waldo emerson. Naguib mahfouz s the cairo trilogy containing the novels palace walk palace of desire and sugar street is an example.

If the book title has a subtitle the subtitle should be italicized as well and separated by a colon to be formatted correctly for mla style as in. Titles of short works like poems articles short stories or chapters should be put in quotation marks. Mla apa and chicago guides agree that the use of italics is appropriate for standard book titles.

When you re writing something by hand underline the titles that would normally be italicized. Instead italicize the titles. The 8th edition confirms that underlining is no longer appropriate.

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. At first this rule seems arbitrary. A book title or in quotation marks e g.

If you are using mla style you should not underline book titles. For example the title of an essay about gone with the wind is styled in ebscohost as follows. When a trilogy is published in one volume with a title of its own the course of action is clear.

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. In earlier editions the mla handbook also permitted titles to be underlined. Music album titles and film titles are also italicized.