Title - italic or underlined

In twenty-first century usage, the most usual way of marking the titles of published sources in academic work is by italicisation. (For advice on this, click Titles - italicisation.) This has been made easy by modern computers, which can set print in italic with no problems. For most of the twentieth century, when the predominant technology was the typewriter, varying between roman and italic was impractical. The convention then followed the practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when manuscripts were handwritten to be sent to the printer - and most handwriting sloped markedly from right to left (////). For reasons of clarity, the instruction to the printer to "print this in italic" was a single underline, which can be produced with comparative ease on a typewriter. (Double underlining meant "Set this in bold.)

Students may see the instruction to "mark titles with italic or underline". This gives you a free choice; but we suggest that you follow the most common convention these days and use italic as your norm.