The Writing Center@KSU
318 Satterfield Hall, (330) 672-1787
writing@kent.edu
http://dept.kent.edu/english/WritingCent/
Mini Lesson #19: Italics (underlining)
Underlining denotes italics, so it is best to use italics. Do not underline, unless you are writing by hand.
Italics are appropriate with titles of the following:
 Books – The Bluest Eye, Moby Dick, The Joy Luck Club, The Great Gatsby, White Teeth
 Magazines – Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Vogue, Time
 Newspapers – New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Saturday Evening Post
 Pamphlets/booklets – Facts About AIDS, Ohio Fishing Guide
 Plays – Hamlet, Death of a Salesman, The Spanish Tragedy, Shoemaker’s Holiday
 Long Poems – The Wasteland, The Odyssey, Parliament of Fowls, The Divine Comedy
 Movies – Dances with Wolves, Red Dragon, A Clockwork Orange, Three Musketeers
 TV Shows – Dateline NBC, Star Trek Voyager, 24, Sex and the City, The Sopranos
 Radio Shows – All Things Considered, Car Talk, Meet the Press
 Musical Compositions – The Barber of Seville (Rossini 1816), Ode to Joy (Beethoven)
 Choreographic Works – Elysian Fields (Heinz Poll 1998)
 Works of Visual Art – American Gothic (Grant Wood), Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci)
 Comic Strips – Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Shoe, The Far Side, Dilbert, Zits
 Software Programs – Quicken, WordPerfect, Excel, Word, Adobe Photoshop
Italicize the following vehicles:
 Ships – Titanic, HMS Queen Elizabeth II
 Aircrafts – Spirit of St. Louis, Akron
 Spacecrafts – Challenger, Apollo 13
 Trains – Silver Bullet, Orient Express
Use italics for foreign words in English sentences:
 “Do all coins say e pluribus unum?” she asked.
Use italics for scientific names of animals and plants:
 An Orchis mascula doesn’t sound nearly as pretty as an “orchid.”
Use italics for words, letters, and numbers used as themselves:
 You have used the word very too many times in this paper.
 Your capital W and your 3 look the same to me.
General notes about italics:
 Do not italicize: the Bible or Books of the Bible; Legal documents (ie. Constitution);
Your papers!
 Do not use italics for foreign-based words now considered part of English, such as
“alumni.”
 USS and HMS are not placed in italics.
 Words, letters, and numbers used as themselves may also be placed in quotation marks.
 Italics may be used for emphasis, but this should be done only rarely. Overuse of this
option dilutes the effectiveness and distracts the reader.
this Mini-Lesson was revised by Elena C. Alvarado-Peters 4/03