You might wonder if you should italicize a book title when referencing it in your writing—whether for a business blog, a magazine article, or a scholarly research paper.
You should italicize the titles of books in most cases, though there isn’t necessarily one right answer in all situations. It all depends on your audience, the publication, and the style guide you’re following.
Do you italicize book titles?
You should generally italicize book titles because they are considered long and complete works. Sometimes, you might mention books in passing or cite them as a source. Italics show that you’re giving them special attention and let the reader know these books are separate from the rest of the work they’re reading.
However, you will also sometimes write book titles within quotation marks when the specific style guide the publication uses calls for that convention. Unfortunately, there isn’t one single standard way of providing title emphasis, so you will always need to know the style required.
Title formatting depends on what style guide you’re using
Organizations use style guides to define their preferred or required nuances in how they want things written. Multiple standard style guides exist geared toward specific industries, publications, and formatting options. These guides describe how to emphasize titles of various works, including books, films, songs, plays, newspapers, magazines, and journals, but they sometimes differ.
Many style guides call for longer works, like books, to be italicized, while frequently specifying quotation marks to be used around the titles of shorter works.
As a writer, you will want to get familiar with the main style guides and learn how they specify the use of italics or quotation marks for titles. If you’re authoring or editing a variety of writing pieces, you’ll likely encounter more than one style requirement.
Note that you may have to pay for a printed copy, subscription, or license. However, searching for style guidance for a specific topic area can sometimes provide answers that aren’t paywalled.
Associated Press (AP)
The AP Stylebook serves as the go-to resource for American journalists working at newspapers, magazines, and public relations firms throughout the United States. The guide is regularly updated to keep up with changing times and is easily searchable online.
As for titles, AP style calls for quotation marks around the titles of books, songs, television shows, poems, lectures, and speeches. However, you won’t use quotations for the names of magazines, newspapers, catalogs of reference materials, or the Bible.
Note that none of the titles above are underlined or italicized. AP style also doesn’t use italics for publications.
Modern Language Association (MLA)
The Modern Language Association has its MLA Style, which sets the standard for writers evaluating information and citing their findings in their writing and documentation. This guide is most commonly used in scholarly works, particularly in the writing of liberal arts and humanities papers that call for the citation of sources.
MLA Style says to italicize books, plays, periodicals (including journals, magazines, and newspapers), and websites but use quotation marks for short stories, essays, poems, television series episodes, song titles, and website or journal articles.
American Psychological Association (APA)
Another very common choice, APA Style offers guidelines for scholarly writing in psychology, nursing, business, communications, engineering, and similar areas. The focus is on clear, concise, and easy-to-understand communication.
APA Style calls for italicization of books, periodicals, reports, webpages, and other stand-alone works.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)
The Chicago Manual of Style is generally considered the definitive formatting and style guide for scholarly works written in history, philosophy, religion, and the arts.
Whether in the text of the work or listed in the bibliography, The Chicago Manual of Style calls for the italicization of titles of books, journals, plays, and other freestanding works. However, CMOS calls for quotation marks for shorter works, such as article titles and chapters.
Using italics vs. quotation marks for titles
You’ll generally use either italics or quotation marks when it comes to titles of works. Rarely do style guides call for underlining?
If you’re wondering which type of titles you should italicize and which you should enclose in quotation marks, we break it down and share some helpful writing tips below.
(Note that we’ll be using AP style in this article to illustrate application to sample titles.)
Titles in italics
Usually, the titles of longer works are italicized. Here are six types of titles that typically use italics.
- Book titles: For the most part, the title of a book is italicized. There are some exceptions, though—the biggest one being when you’re following AP Stylebook. AP style calls for book titles to have quotation marks.
- Newspaper and magazine titles: In most cases, formatting and style guides call for newspaper and magazine titles to be written with italics, with one primary exception: AP capitalizes newspaper and magazine titles but doesn’t use italics or quotation marks.
- Movie titles: Like books, italics is the general rule for movies. AP style is, once again, the exception, calling for movie and film titles to have quotations.
- Television series titles: The name of a TV series is usually italicized when written out. AP style calls for shows to be written in quotes. Specific episodes of television shows are also sometimes written in quotation marks, such as when using CMOS, MLA, or APA Style.
- Long poem titles: The titles of long poems are usually treated as books and italicized in most common formatting and writing styles. AP style is, again, the exception, calling for the use of quotation marks.
- Painting names: Works of art, such as paintings and sculptures, typically have their names italicized in writing. However, AP style calls for these titles (but not sculptures) to be written in quotes.
Titles in quotations
Since the titles of longer or complete works are usually italicized, shorter works generally have their titles written with double quotation marks. The use of quotes sets these shorter works apart from the longer works they often fall within.
Six primary types of titles call for the use of quotation marks.
- Article titles: While journals, newspapers, and magazine titles are italicized, the articles within them are written with quotes. The primary exception is APA Style, which calls for neither italics nor quotes for the title of an article. Instead, APA requires the capitalization of the first letter in the first word of the title. If the title includes a colon, the first letter of the first word after the colon is also capitalized.
- Book chapter titles: Like articles, book chapters or short stories that make up a longer work (e.g., a collection of stories or a complete novel) are written within double quotation marks. For instance, in the Harry Potter series, the first book is “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” The first chapter of that book is “The Boy Who Lived.”
- An episode of a series title: Generally, a TV show episode is written in quotes to represent that it’s a shorter piece within a longer body of work (i.e., an ongoing television series). As an example, the first episode of the TV show “Friends” is called “The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate.”
- Song titles: Writing song titles in quotes helps emphasize and differentiate songs from other works on an album or in an artist’s body of work. Meanwhile, albums are often written in italics (except for AP style, which uses quote marks for specific tracks and album titles). For example, think “Shake It Off” from Taylor Swift’s “1989” album or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album.
- Speech titles: As a shorter work, famous speech titles are also italicized when written, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
- Scene or act names: While the title of a play is typically italicized (except for AP style, which uses quote marks), the names of scenes or acts are written in double quotation marks. For instance, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is italicized, but “Act 3, Scene 1” is written in quotes.
Always remember that when a title is followed by a period or comma, the period or comma goes inside the quotation marks (as in “The Boy Who Lived.”). Additionally, single quotation marks should be used if a title is quoted within a block quote.
Exceptions to title formatting rules
Three key exceptions exist regarding the rules applied for the emphasis of titles. We’ll walk you through these main exceptions below. Remember: As with anything you’re writing, formatting rules depend on the style guide you’re following.
Collection of various novel titles
If you have a book series or collection of various novel titles, you won’t italicize or write them in quotation marks. For instance, each of the seven Harry Potter books has its own title (such as “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”). But all together, they’re referred to as the Harry Potter series.
Titles with the word “the”
When it comes to titles of newspapers, you won’t italicize the word “the” if it precedes the name of a title, such as the Financial Times. Of course, if “the” or another article is included within the title like The New York Times, you’ll italicize or quote it according to the style guide you’re following.
Punctuation in titles
Some book titles include punctuation, which can get tricky. If punctuation is part of the title, though, you’ll include it in your italics or quotation marks. Generally, if a book title includes punctuation—a colon, a comma, a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark—you’ll also capitalize the first word after it. A good example is “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” by Dr. Seuss.
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