Book Quotes Or Italics

Titles of poems and shorter works of fiction are generally in quotation marks.

Book quotes or italics. If a novel a long poem or a play is collected in an anthology we italicize any reference to the title if the work was originally published as a separate entity. This can be done with italics or quote marks depending on what it is you re writing about. Books or movies that are part of a series are also italicized.

In the book world the chicago manual of style is the primary style guide first published in 1906. 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. It may depend on the writing format you ve been instructed to write in.

Understanding whitman s song of myself. Note that this category addresses the use of quotation marks other than in the presentation of direct quotations. My favorite movie in the lord of the rings series is return of the king.

When you come across a title within a title use quotation marks or italics as normal. However a general rule of thumb to follow is that longer pieces of work like books require italics whereas shorter pieces of work like poems or articles will be written with quotation marks. Why are we confused.

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. 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. One reason we find these guidelines difficult to remember is that many newspapers enclose book and movie titles in quotation marks.

Find out more about formatting titles on proofed s writing tips blog. Quotation marks are used to present linguistic examples and titles of book chapters and articles in the text. Quotes within quotes employ single quotes and italics within italics revert back to non italicized text.