Judy Vorfeld's OFFICE SUPPORT SERVICES

Writing, editing, photography, technology, and Web development for small businesspeople

  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
    • Snazzy Presentations
    • Homonym Heaven
    • Lists: capitalization and punctuation
  • Contact
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Grammar / How to Format Book Titles on the Web

How to Format Book Titles on the Web

January 23, 2006 By Administrator

What’s the proper way to display the title of a book on a Web page? The traditional method of underlining makes it confusing for Web users, who expect an underlined word or phrase to be a hyperlink. Should the title be bolded? Italicized?


A lot of underlining of book titles is used in bibliographies for scholarly works, but other than that, it’s not done much on the Web. Or shouldn’t be. And it’s not used in the print world much, either. Underlining was initially used to tell the typesetter to put specific text in italics.

The latest style guides say to use italics for titles of books, films plays, and long poems, works of art, periodicals, etc. One of my favorite online style guides is The Web Content Style Guide by McGovern, Norton, and O’Dowd (2002).

Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition (2003) says (8.172) that when quoted in text or listed in a bibliography, titles of books, journals, plays, and other freestanding works are italicized. CMS also says that titles of articles, chapters, and other works are set in roman text and enclosed in quotation marks.

Here are a couple of good resources for this issue: Using Italics and Underlining, and Polished Presentations.

Filed Under: Grammar, Language, Writing

Comments

  1. Doug Coe says

    March 31, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    Judy–thank you for the clear info on what to do with book titles. I’ll be using italics.
    Doug

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Subscribe To My Newsletter

Categories

Latest Posts

10 Things to Look for Before Choosing the Best Home Care Assistance

What Should I Look for When Choosing Home Health Care? Guest Post by Nicholas Rubright As your … [Read More...]

How Hiring Freelancers Can Save a Solopreneur’s Sanity

Guest Post by Lance Cody-Valdez If you’re a solopreneur, you may be wondering if you’ll ever have … [Read More...]

How to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance

December 2, 2021 Guest post: Teresa Siqueira If you have a busy … [Read More...]

Tags

4 Paws for Ability Add new tag Arizona Arizona Bridge to Independent Living Arizona Center for Disability Law Autism autism service dog Becky Blanton BL Ochman calamity jan Chancer Christmas Hills Tree Farm Dale Chihuly David Crook Desert Botanical Garden Disabilities Disability Empowerment Center Donnie Kanter Winokur Facebook FASD Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Grammar hawaii holualoa Iyal Winokur Janet Crook jan pierson Judy Vorfeld Kerrie Simpson Litchfield Park AZ Martha Retallick Morasha Winokur Mossyrock Peoria Peoria AZ Phoenix Photography Ron Simpson Seth Godin Social Networking Sue C Boynton Poetry Contest TED Twitter Wildlife World Zoo Aquarium Writing

Judy Vorfeld's
OFFICE SUPPORT SERVICES

10439 W Royal Palm Rd.
Peoria AZ 85345

Editing and Writing Services

  • Home
  • Newsletter
  • About
  • Articles
  • Contact

Copyright © 1998 ‐ 2019 — Judy Vorfeld's OFFICE SUPPORT SERVICES • All rights reserved.