Underlining or Italicizing

You may choose whether to use italics or underlining. Whichever you choose, be consistent. In other words, don’t underline some things and italicize others. This guide will italicize its examples.

What is usually tricky about underlining or italicizing is knowing when to italicize or underline and when to use quotation marks. Take a look at the following sentence.

Standard

“Edith’s Night Out” is an episode of the classic sitcom All in the Family.

Quotation marks appear around an episode, a part of the TV show series, and the name of the TV series is italicized.

The following list is not exhaustive, but it provides a good sense of the kinds of titles that are italicized.

• books
• periodicals (both magazines and journals)
• newspapers
• plays
• television series
• movies
• paintings
• sculptures
• radio shows
• operas
• musicals
• ballets
• long poems (usually those that were published as single units rather than as part of a collection)
• names of long musical compositions but not their formal designations (i.e., Shubert’s Unfinished Symphony would be underlined or italicized, but Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor would not be)
• websites
• search engines (e.g., JSTOR, Ebscohost)
• names of ships and trains, including airships and spaceships (e.g., Hindenburg, Orient Express, USS Maine, HMS Victory—note that the prefixes USS (United States Ship) and HMS (His Majesty’s Ship) are not italicized)
• court cases (e.g., Marbury v. Madison, Miranda v. Arizona, Shakespeare v. Pasadena)

Titles of religious works are not underlined or italicized (e.g., the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an [or Koran], Genesis, Exodus, Mark).

Standard Sentences

I read a review of Abbey Road in Time. I couldn’t find a review in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The Beatles read King Lear, saw West Side Story, and watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

She thinks Shakespeare Geek is the best Shakespeare blog on the Internet.

We study Rime of the Ancient Mariner in British Literature, and we also read passages from the King James Version of the Bible.

I grew up listening to The Jack Benny Program, but now I prefer to watch The Office.

Standard

The production was really delightful.

To determine whether a phrase is considered foreign or English, consult a recent dictionary. I recommend the most recent edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (in hard copy) because it has an entire section entitled “Foreign Words & Phrases.”

Standard Sentences

That student organization has a certain je ne sais quoi.

You may think vox populi vox Dei, but wait until you’re voted off the island!

She spent her Wanderjahr in East Asia, Europe, and New Zealand.

I’m so hungry I could eat a horse, façon de parler.

Words used as terms may also appropriately be placed in quotation marks.

Standard Sentences

Does your name have more than one j?

How many times does the letter s appear in Mississippi?

The skater’s right leg should be held in an h position before the jump.

The term iambic refers to the rhythm of the poetry. (This sentence could also correctly be written in this way: The term “iambic” refers to the rhythm of the poetry.)

For the Careful Writer:

In many modern works of fiction, internal dialogue is set in italics, but that style isn’t applicable for most formal writing. Instead of italicizing quoted thoughts, put them in quotation marks:

“She’s not as talkative as I imagined,” I thought.

Sidney must have thought, “This is the best day ever.”