View source for How to mark titles

Works whose titles should be marked fall into two groups. First are 'the heavyweights', pieces of a certain length and importance
*books - whether fact, fiction or reference - ALL types of books;
*plays;
*films;
*journals and newspapers;
*operas;
*major poems, of book length, and those over, say, 50 pages
*sequences, e.g. of song-cycles, paintings and  poems
*etc (other pieces of work with similar characteristics)

Second are smaller pieces, often component parts of members of the first group. These include:
*chapters of books;
*articles in Journals;
*short poems;
*songs in operas;
*song titles;
*short stories;
*individual pictures
*etc (other less 'weighty' pieces).

The precise memberships of these groups is largely a matter of [[judgement]] and taste. In general, try to adapt your practice to a consistent view of what constitutes a long and what a short piece of work. Over time, it will change; and there will always be borderline cases which will be disputed by pedants (try your best not to join in too seriously!).

*The first group, the heavy weights, should be marked more strongly. Different publishers and Departments in Universities etc have different '[[house rules]]' for this, so follow the expectations of the audience you are writing for. AWE's preferred practice is to use italics. This is best when you are word-processing. (Traditionally the manuscript, or handwriting, equivalent of italic was <u>underlining</u>. This acted as an instruction to a printer to set the type as italic. In modern word-processing, where italic is as easy as, if not easier than, underlining, italicization is preferable. It is after all the ultimate effect that was always intended. See also [[Title - italic or underlined]].)  In handwriting, which was not intended for a printer, for example school essays and private letters, the tradition was to use double quotation marks. These were preferred over single quotation marks, because they were less ambiguous. (See [[quotation marks]].)

*The most usual practice nowadays to mark the second sort of title (the 'lightweight' ones), is to use single [[inverted comma]]s. So we might get:  "The chapter 'Airs and Graces' in Lynne Truss's book on punctuation, ''Eats, Shoots and Leaves''...", or "The song 'Where'er you walk' in Handel's oratorio ''Semele''", or "Meron's article, ' The Geneva Conventions as Customary Law' in ''The American Journal of International Law''."

See also [[titles - of books, etc.]] and [[Referencing the Bible]].
[[category:referencing]]