How to Appropriately Use Italics

Italic text is commonly used for titles of longer works and for foreign words.

If you recently handed in an academic paper or other written work and got it back marked in red ink with the letters "ital" sprinkled throughout the text, you've used italics incorrectly. Beginning and even intermediate writers can get confused about the rules governing the use of italic text. Observing several rules of thumb when formatting italic text in a paper can keep your professor from shaving points off the score of your text, or mean the difference between an acceptance or rejection in the publishing world.

Instructions

1. Italicize titles of books, academic journals, anthologies of shorter works and periodicals. Also, use italic text for the names of TV shows. For example, you would italicize "Game of Thrones," but use quotation marks for an individual episode such as "Lord Snow."

2. Use italics for music albums, such as "A Matter of Life and Death" by Iron Maiden.

3. Use italics for words in a foreign language if the words are not fully incorporated into English.

4. Italicize words when they are referred to in the sentence as words. In the sentence "People frequently misspell the word definitely," you should format "definitely" in italic text.

References

• Carson-Newmaqn College; Punctuating Titles, When to Use Underlining, Quotes and Italics; Kip Wheeler; 2011