Friday, July 18, 2008

(42) Title Format

Format titles appropriately. [EDIT]

Titles are traditionally formatted either with quote marks or italics (conventionally identified for printers with underlining before the widespread availability of computer-based text formatting), depending on the type of work.

Short works such as poems, essays, short stories, songs, and news articles have their titles in quote marks.

Long works such as novels, books, movies, albums, and plays have their titles in italics (some still prefer underlining, although underlining is a printer’s signal for italicizing).

REM’s album Accelerate includes a single also titled “Accelerate.”

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is included in his collection Leave of Grass.

For an on-line discussion of formatting titles, visit:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/


Note: Students submitting essays for courses and scholars submitting work for publication should not format the titles of their own work, neither quote marks nor italics (underlining).