Style Manual
Punctuation
B.8. Titles (books, films, music,
etc.) (For software titles, see C9.9)
b8.1. Titles of the following should be italicized or underlined
to indicate to the typesetter to use italics:
- Books (The Scarlet Letter, Das Kapital)
- Plays (Henry V, The Threepenny Opera)
- Films (Gone With the Wind, Wings of Desire)
- Periodicals (Scandinavian Studies, Film Comment, The Express-Times)
- Collections of poetry (Leaves of Grass, Diving
Into the Wreck)
- Operas and oratorios (Don Giovanni, Messiah)
- Paintings (Starry Night, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold)
- Dance Pieces
- Exhibits (John Kim's exhibit Machine Dreams)
- Statues, Drawings, and other works of art
- Television continuing series (PBS's Sesame Street, Masterpiece Theater, A Biography of America)
b8.2. Titles of the following should be in quotation marks:
- Short stories ("Big Two-Hearted River," "Victory
Over Japan")
- Essays/addresses ("When We Dead Awaken," "The
American Scholar")
- Periodical articles ("Ford to City: Drop Dead")
- Individual poems ("Song of Myself," "The
Red Wheelbarrow")
- Songs/short musical compositions ("Don't Give Up,"
"Clair de Lune")
- Television/radio shows (unless a series-see above) ("X-Files"); also individual episodes such as "Death on the Hill," an episode of "Hill Street Blues."
b8.3 Titles in upper and lower case:
- Academic courses (Contemporary Religious Issues, Solid State
Physics)
For First-Year Seminar or Values and Science/Technology Seminar see a2.2.
b8.4. Musical compositions with a title made up of a form and a key are
not italicized; rather, the form and key are capitalized without quotation
marks (Symphony no. 3 in C Major; Sonata in E-flat Minor). (Note:
In musical texts, minor keys are all lower case, major keys are upper case, and the words "major" "minor" are omitted. [Sonata in E-flat])
b8.5. Descriptive titles for well-known musical compositions are italicized
if the works are long (Dvorak's New World Symphony; Mussorgsky's Pictures
at an Exhibition) and placed in quotation marks if the works are short (Bach's
Prelude and Fugue in E-flat ["St. Anne"]) or ("Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring").
NOTE: In a publication in which many titles of musical compositions are mentioned, all may be italicized regardless of length but be sure this is done consistently
throughout. Williams Center for the Arts season brochure uses upper case for "no." in symphony titles.
Return to Table of Contents