Book titles: I just can’t stop reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Anthology and collection titles: I need the Norton Anthology of English Literature for a class I am taking next fall. Long poems: The Bhagavad Gita is a long Hindu poem written in Sanskrit. Plays: Sophocles is one of the most famous ancient Greek playwrights. He wrote plays such as Antigone and Oedipus the King. Movie and television show titles: We watched Halloween last night, and it terrified us! Fortunately we followed it up with Brooklyn Nine-Nine to lighten the mood. Album titles: In Utero is my favorite Nirvana album. Long musical works: Mozart’s Don Giovanni is one of my favorite operas. I also really enjoy Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for piano. Works of art: Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted many self-portraits, including the famous Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. An exception to italics exists for citing titles that incorporate other titles. For example, if you wanted to cite the (made-up) book titled Shakespeare’s King Lear and the Pagan Tradition, you would need to de-italicize the title of the play because it is present in another book’s title.

Newspapers: My mom subscribes to the New York Times. Journals and magazines: I read articles from the New England Journal of Medicine for school, but when I’m reading for fun I prefer People. Radio series and podcasts: I listen to This American Life whenever I get the chance. Like nearly everyone else in 2014, I was also hooked on the podcast Serial. News programs: The Rachel Maddow Show is one of the top-performing news programs on cable news networks.

However, some academic styles such as the American Sociological Association (ASA) recommend that you italicize the titles of specific public documents, but not well-known documents (e. g. , the Constitution). For example: Telecommunications Act of 1996, Public Law 104-014, 110 U. S. Statutes at Large 56 (1996). [6] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

Obviously, if you use the title as the beginning of your own title or a sentence, you would capitalize the word “the. ” You would not italicize it, however. For example: The Wall Street Journal is the premier source of business and financial news in the US. [8] X Research source

This rule, like several others, is open to interpretation. A general rule of thumb is that if the foreign word is in an English dictionary, you do not need to italicize it. [10] X Research source Lunsford, Andrea. The St. Martin’s Handbook. 7th Ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011: 773.

The Enola Gay U. S. S. Cole Don’t italicize types of vehicles, such as the Learjet.

The famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright was a landmark in American legal history.

For example: Homo sapiens is the binomial nomenclature for the human species. Homo is the Latin genus name, and Homo sapiens is our species name. In scientific writing, it is customary to give the full binomial nomenclature in the title and the first time it is used in the paper. After that, abbreviate like so: H. sapiens. You would not italicize “humans,” the common English name for H. sapiens.

In APA style, if you are not sure whether something should be italicized, the preference is to not italicize it. [15] X Research source Many writers for the web prefer to use underlining or quotation marks to highlight text. This is because italics can be difficult to distinguish on a computer screen. Use your judgment to determine whether italics or other forms of highlighting are appropriate for your purpose. [16] X Research source

He had managed to eat ten cookies. I love the word flabbergasted.

When defining an unfamiliar term, you may want to italicize its first appearance: “The scientific term for sneezing is sternutation. ”[19] X Research source Use italics to emphasize a letter on its own: I got an A in history this term. When he moved to the Denver Broncos, quarterback Peyton Manning retained his famous 18 on his jersey.

He had managed to eat not nine, but ten cookies. The words through and threw may sound the same but obviously have very different meanings.

For example, APA style specifies that using italics to provide emphasis is inappropriate unless the reader might miss your intended meaning without the italics. Chicago style also does not recommend the use of italics for emphasis. [21] X Research source