Constant Content

Can anyone tell me the proper way to type the title of a book for a CC article? Is it underlined or italicized, or neither. I looked at a couple of book review articles for sale and it seems like the book titles have no special formatting or quotation marks. Thanks for the help... I would hate to have an article rejected for not formating a book title correctly!

The display version of the articles doesn't show any formatting, so you won't see any underlines or italics when looking. I usually italicize book and movie titles in CC articles.

Thanks Celeste. I thought it was strange that there was no formatting for book titles.

I'm glad I clicked on this question and answer. I guess rules have changed since I was in school. We were always taught to underline the titles of books. Thank you. I would have messed up. This is one less thing I have to worry about being rejected.

Patti

Patti -- what you were taught in school isn't wrong. Underlining is a way to indicate italics; e.g., when editors mark up a manuscript by hand, they underline words that should be italicized in the printed version. And particularly if you went to school before computers and word processing applications were available, underlining was used instead of italics, because (as some of us will recall) it wasn't possible to use italics with a typewriter.

To be completely honest, I've seen all these and more used online and in print. I've seen them in italics, underlines, in quotation marks, some combination of the three and a few others. As pointed out, the rules were quite different in the days of typewriters. There probably is a definitive answer to the original question, but the fact remains that most of the "rules" are ignored in this day and age.

I would say to pick your style depending on the type of article you're writing, especially if it's for a request. In the case of a request, and if there's a link provided in that request, try to get a feel for the quirks of that site. I've seen some articles which just capitalize the name of the book, and put the byline in italics. (The Norse Myths: Introduced and Retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland)

Italicizing the title of book is the most professional and up-to-date way of setting titles off from the rest of the text. We don't really have any need for underlining because we aren't using typewriters.

Thanks,
Ed