Italicizing, Underlining Book Article Titles: It is definitely a yes!! Italicizing and underling any book article titles is very important so as to serve its first motive– that is to catch the eyes of the reader in the first instance and at least having some basic ideas and thoughts what the article or book deals with, therefore the importance of a title is very important.
In the light of that sentence, italicising and underling book titles are also very important varying from different to different cases. Here in this article we would take a quick glimpse of different article/book title example’s styles and book title in text.
Italicizing, Underlining Book Article Titles/Examples
- Importance of Italics and Underlining
- How to Italicise Book and Article Titles depending upon different Styles
Importance of Italics and Underlining
The use of italics (characters set in a way or font style that slants to the right) and underlining to make our or highlight certain words from others words in the text. These typographical devices actually mean the same thing therefore it would be unwise if one is using both the styles – italics and underlining within a same text.
Some readers get irritate at this and may lead to the ignoring of that particular work of writing.
Nowadays people more often use italics more than underlining as it increases the beauty of the written work. But in early days, when the technology of using italics were not present then people mainly used underlining to highlight important things in their work. (The APA Publication Manual continues to prompt on underlining.)
In this section, although we used italics only, but at times we should also consider it to change alongside with the underlined text. The rules and regulations for newspaper writing are different and hence, do not apply in this case.
Generally speaking, we italicize the titles of articles, books, poems, and other such things that basically stand by themselves. In this way we differentiate between different titles of novels and journals, titles of poems, articles, short stories, and names of series and episodes aired on television and OTT platforms.
The titles of these shorter pieces in this case, would be surrounded with double quotation marks (double inverted commas).
A good way to remember that what needs to be italicised and what needs quotation marks is that the pieces contained within a book (or series of books) or larger ‘publications’ (which could include magazines, journals, blogs and websites) tend to be placed in quotation marks basically putting within inverted commas, while the bigger and larger publications themselves are italicised.
Even also while writing the titles of newspapers, we don’t italicize the word the, although it is part of the title of the newspaper (say, the New York Times or say, the Telegraph), and also we do not italicize the name of the town or city in which the newspaper had been published unless that name is part of the newspaper title, for example – the Hartford Courant, but the London Times.
Other titles that we would italicize includes the following as stated below:
- Journals and Magazines:Time, Times of India, U.S. News and World Report, Georgia Review, Statesman.
- Plays:The Merchant of Venice, Don Quixote, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
- Long Musical Pieces:Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite (but “Waltz of the Flowers”), Schubert’s Winterreise (but “Ave Maria”). For musical pieces named by type, number and key — Mozart’s Divertimento in D major, Barber’s Cello Sonata Op. 6 — we use neither italics nor quotation marks.
- Cinema:Titanic, Greyhound, The Invisible Man.
- Television and Radio Programs: Dateline, Friends, Seinfeld, Fresh Air, Car Talk
- Artworks:Raja Ravi Varma’s Shakuntala and Yashoda Krishna, the Venus de Milo, Whistler’s The Artist’s Mother, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.
- Famous Speeches:Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Washington’s Second Inaugural.
- Long Poems(that are extensive long enough to appear in a book by themselves): Milton’s Paradise Lost, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Longfellow’s
- Pamphlets:New Developments in Coronavirus Research
We also don’t italicize the titles of long sacred works like the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Koran. The same goes for the titles of the titles of books of the sacred works, for example the – Genesis, 1 Corinthians, Revelation and the Gospels. When any punctuation like any question mark or exclamation mark is part of a title, one has to make sure that particular punctuation or mark is italicized along with the title-
- The most famous pamphlet of the French Revolution is by Abbe Sieyes’ What Is The Third Estate?
- My favourite book is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
- I love Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
One must also remember that if any punctuation like an exclamatory or question mark is added to the end of the title so as to ask any question, then one must not italicise that punctuation. This same goes for commas as well as inverted commas.
- Did you enjoy Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet?
How to Italicise Book and Article Titles depending upon different Styles
In professional publications also, the series of book titles would rather be italicised or would be written in the ‘Roman’ style text.
- The MLA gives a confusing set of rules where the way book series titles are treated depends on whether the series title forms a part of each book’s title. If it does so, we can italicise the series title; otherwise, leave the series title as it is in plain text. For example, Nancy Drew is a series title which we would not italicise, as the words of the title ‘Nancy Drew’ aren’t in the book titles.
On the other side, Harry Potter, could go one way or the either, because ‘the Harry Potter series’ could mean the series on Harry Potter which is the name of the protagonist and hence, aren’t italicised.
- Chicago Style’s rule of leaving series titles in plain text and not italicising it, is much logical and simple as well. Because, a series is not a single physical set of book.
In many cases we see that series and book titles may be and may not be italicised or wither one could be italicised, well, having said that, it is completely up to the person doing it.
Since appendages aren’t a part of the original book title, they shouldn’t be italicised. It is strange yet, it is is a sensible advise: these features are not part of the title itself, therefore to present them as they are might lead to confusion.