Daughter had her writing SOL last week – for those of you who don’t live in Virginia, “SOL” stands for Standards of Learning, standardized tests used to assess student competence at the end of a course. SOLs have dramatically affected the state of education in our Commonwealth, forcing teachers to link all of their instruction to SOLs and to sweat every spring in fear that their students won’t do well on the exams and, consequently, jobs might be in jeopardy. The current environment emphasizes spoon-feeding over exploration and regurgitation over problem solving.
Whoops, I got carried away. Let me step down off my box and continue with the topic of this post… Ahem.
Daughter didn’t know when to use italics and when to use quotes when using titles in an essay. My Word Nerd gut told her this: For big items, like books, movies, plays, use italics. For smaller things, like magazine articles or song titles, use quotes. I wasn’t sure about poems.
Here’s what my trusty resource, Grammatically Correct by Anne Stilman, has to say on the matter:
Italicize the following:
- names of ships and space vehicles
- book titles
- newspapers
- magazines
- films
- plays
- operas
- CDs/ albums
Use quotation marks to show:
- titles of short stories
- poems
- book chapters
- magazine or journal articles
- songs
Word Nerd Note: These are conventions, not absolutes, and it is acceptable to use italics or quotes or nothing to set off the items listed above. For bibliographies, you can use a style guide (usually your teacher or publisher suggests one) to determine what rule to follow, and if you have no specifications, just be consistent with your formatting.
Word Nerd Workout
Which of these need italics and which need quotations, according to the convention above?
- The Great Gatsby (a novel)
- She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night (poem)
- The Masque of the Red Death (short story)
- The Fantasy (a cruise ship… one I’ll be riding on in May!)
- Fix You (a song)
- Vogue (magazine)
- The Martian (film or book, take your pick!)
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
Great tips!!! I think I’ve italicized song titles before. Now I have it in my brain not to do that again!
Fantastic! Glad you found this post helpful. 🙂
1, 4 and 7? I think classic pizza toppings and dreamy goalkeepers like Hope Solo also should be italicized. But that’s just convention.
(I recently wrote a post that had movie titles both ways. I was wrong and right all at once, and, incidentally, not for the first time in my life.)
Ha! Eli, didn’t I say in my post that consistency is key? I guess being wrong and right at once is better than all wrong. Perhaps we can call your method of using italics “The Eli Method”. 😉
I like to throw out a lot of italics for all sorts of things. Thanks for the refresher!
Awesome. I needed the refresher, especially as when you submit to agents, they often say to put the book in ALL CAPS.
Sorry about the SOL educational system. The bureaucracy drives me crazy.
p.s. The Fantasy!!!! Shouldn’t that be in ALL CAPS? 🙂 I just got off a 4-day cruise with my mothers and sisters and I have to say – is there any better way to see the world? I hope you love it.
Yay! Any cruise worthy tips? Perhaps you can write a blog post about it? 😉
Finally – a straightforward rule. Are you sure this is for English? 😉
I’m glad you’re happy, Debbie, but remember, it’s not necessarily a rule, more a suggestion. So, yeah, it’s English. 😉