What are the rules for underlining, italicizing, etc. for books, articles, and all the other types of things?

Question

Sorry that is a very vauge question, but yeah....

Answer 1

Basically, if it's long enough to be published on its own, like the title of a novel, magazine, or movie, you italicize it, which is exactly the same as underlining. If it is something like a poem, short story, song, or article, it is usually not published on its own and you put the title in quotation marks.

Answer 2

There isn't a National Academy of American English that enforces uniform style rules. Newspapers, magazines, and journals often have their own style books, and teachers and professors might have their own preferences, or direct you to a particular style manual.

That said, here's how I do things if there aren't specific instructions:

* Titles of books, movies, albums, and other such complete works are italicized. (Underlining can substitute in handwriting or on a typewriter; italic still emphasizes the citation but isn't as visually obtrusive.)

* Titles of articles, short stories, and individual songs are usually in quotation marks.

I follow "logical" quoting, more common in England than in the US, where commas and periods go inside quotation marks only when they belong to the material being quoted, "like this".

I agree with another answerer that boldface "screams" on the page, and should be used extremely sparingly. It looks better in paragraph headings of a few words than suddenly in the middle of text. Italics are better for ordinary emphasis.

I had a professor whose only absolute rule on those style points was to be consistent, and thus non-distracting.

Not quite on topic, but when you quote a URL for a specific article or web page, it's a good idea to indicate when you visited the website, since web pages can change or be removed.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Books should always be underlined or italicized;
Articles should be in quotes or italicized;
Short stories and anything else on the smaller size should be in quotes or italicized.

Now that computers are so common, and everything is typed, italics are often used for everything. Underlined or putting something in quotation marks is usually just for when you're hand writing something.

Answer 4

If you're talking about proofreading then book titles, newspapers, plays, films, TV shows, poems, works of art and songs are generally italicized.

Something that is underlined twice should be put into small capitals; three times into large capitals.

Bold is often used for headwords in dictionaries, bibliographies and reference lists; indexing and cross referencing generally, to distinguish between types of reference or their degree of importance; and titles and headings in tables.

You should avoid using bold for emphasis in the course of normal text; it's too 'in your face.' Use italics instead as that is less obtrusive - but do so sparingly.

Answer 5

Titles of major works (books, epic poems, newspapers, magazines, music albums, pieces of art, ships, etc.) should be italicized when typed (underlined when printed).

Titles of short works (short stories, poems, newspaper or magazine articles, songs, etc.) should be put in quotation marks.

Answer 6

Underline book titles and put article titles (magazine/newspaper articles) in quotations.

Answer 7

there are none.