Italics: Never use both italics and quotations together; use one or the other and be consistent in usage

throughout the document.

• In general, underline the titles of works.
• Titles to be underlined include the names of movies, books, plays, long poems published as books,
compact discs, audiocassettes, record albums, ballets, television and radio programs, and operas.
QUOTATION MARKS
• Use quotation marks for the titles of works published within larger works.
• Such titles include the names of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, chapters of books, individual
episodes of television and radio programs, and songs.
WAYS TO APPLY ITALICS/UNDERLINING
1. Italics/underlining is used to identify certain titles,
such as books, movies, plays, newspapers,
magazines, paintings, sculptures, and aircraft.
• Tom Hanks starred in a number of movies including Big, The Terminal, and The Da Vinci Code.
2. Italics/underlining is also used to identify foreign words or phrases that have not become fully
anglicized/naturalized.
Consult a dictionary if in doubt.
• Paule Marshall’s novel Brown Girl, Brownstones is a bildungsroman.
3. When you include both a word and its definition in a sentence, italicize the word being defined and
place its definition in quotation marks.
 Aesthetic is different from the word ecstatic which means “thrilled” or “elated”; aesthetic means
“artistically beautiful.”
4. Underline or italicize words used as words and not as grammatical units.
Ex. Although you is the second person plural pronoun, some Southerners insist on saying “y’all.”
The phrase a lot of is commonly used—and misspelled—in writing.

References
Health and Human Rights Journal François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (2018). HHR
Journal. Retrieved from: https://cdn2.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/125/2013/05/HHR-
EDITORIAL-STYLE-GUIDE_2018.pdf

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