Do You Italicize Book Titles? The Common Myth Most Students Believe

A title is the first thing that catches a reader's attention, and making a formatting mistake in it can make the first impression fall short, as well as your grades. And when you include different writing styles in the picture, then this is one of the most common questions: whether we need to italicize book titles or not becomes a little bit complex.

Fret not, because the simplest answer is a big yes for the titles italicized for books, except when using AP Style, which uses quotation marks. However, the more you discover about this formatting style, the more you find yourself revolving around various questions. So we do know that and it's covered here in the most streamlined way so you will not end up when it comes to writing a title formatting for a book! 

Are Book Titles Italicized, Underlined, or Put in Quotes?

If a book title needs to be italicized, or does it have an exception to that? Yes, it's usually true for works that stand on their own, such as books, movies, TV shows, newspaper articles, or music albums—you always italicize these kinds of work. Within longer works, such as anthologies of short stories, chapter titles, article titles and individual songs, would be set in quotation marks.

But this core rule applies across MLA, APA, and Chicago styles, and AP style serves as the primary journalistic exception that uses quotation marks.

Why Book Titles Are Italicized Instead of Underlined in Modern Writing

Typewriters could not physically slant a letter. That single mechanical limit is the reason underlining became the standard stand-in for italics decades ago, and the habit kept going long after typewriters left classrooms for good.

Word processors erased that limitation completely. Italics turned into a single keystroke, and style guides updated to reflect it almost immediately.

This was not the end of it with underlining, however. It lives in handwritten essays and timed, in-class examinations; the ability to do the latter convincingly isn't something most can do at a moment's notice. There are two ways to style book titles: underlining and italicizing, and it depends on the tool you are using. Typed work calls for italics. Handwritten work falls back on underlining.

One caveat matters here. Individual instructors sometimes hold onto preferences that do not match the general rule, and a few still ask for underlining even on typed submissions. An assignment sheet or a professor's direct instruction always outranks the general convention described on this page.

The Main Rule: When to Italicize Titles vs. When to Use Quotation Marks

Every confusing title question collapses down to a single question, and it is worth memorizing this one line: Does the work stand complete on its own, or does it live inside something larger? Complete works get italics. Contained pieces get quotation marks. That is the entire mechanism. Apply it to a title already familiar, and the logic clicks almost instantly.

Works That Are Italicized: Complete and Standalone Publications

• Books and novels, such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• A full anthology, collection, or an entire book series, when referring to the whole set
• Movies, complete television series, and stage plays
• Newspapers, magazines, and academic journals
• Websites and full-length reports

Works in Quotation Marks: Short Pieces Contained Within Larger Works

• Short stories and individual poems
• A single chapter or section from a larger book
• Article titles published inside a magazine, newspaper, or journal
• One episode from a television series
• Songs, since the album holding them takes the italics instead

Should you quote or italicize the title of a book as soon as the title of a particular chapter seems so significant it warrants emphasis? A chapter may be controversial and yet be used without quotation marks entirely within a book and not in a particular quotation. The container always decides the formatting, never how significant a piece feels on its own.

Do You Italicize Book Titles in APA Style? Official 7th Edition Rules for In-Text and References

APA's approach to italics is rather unconventional; the same formatting is used in both a sentence and a reference list item. There are no changes between the two places. APA has more knowledge about capitalization than the majority of students will know regarding capitalization. 

Capitalization and italics: Is APA capitalizing or are book titles italicized in APA? 

Not quite. First word after a colon (if one applies) and first word after a period in the main title are capatalized when there are capitals. Proper Nouns are capitalized. Other words are lowercase (except for "all others," which are excluded). Most students tend not to realize that when they type it for the first few times, it is the wrong case.

Inside a paragraph, a citation might read:

In The great gatsby, Fitzgerald examines the emptiness behind the pursuit of wealth.

Only "The" carries a capital there.

The corresponding reference list entry looks like this:

Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The great gatsby. Charles Scribner's Sons.

It is important to note that students who are familiar with and prefer writing in MLA may find it easy to automatically capitalize “Great” and “Gatsby” when they are in an APA writing task. After all, it's a natural instinct. It' is not the correct setting by APA style and sentence case is the correct one!

Do You Italicize Book Titles in MLA Style? Correct Formatting for In-Text Citations and Works Cited Pages

For most readers here, it's likely that it's the version that already exists in their brain from being taught in high school English and undergraduate humanities classes in the United States, so MLA is probably the one that they know best. 

A sentence with a quotation as its main subject could sound like:

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald critiques the American Dream through Gatsby's downfall (Fitzgerald 12).

A Works Cited entry is similar:

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.

Symbolism in The Great Gatsby

One caveat, of course, must be mentioned up front, as it snags almost everybody off-guard at some point: what about the causes that spawn human births? Almost everyone overages gets trapped in another wrinkle: What about the causes that give rise to the birth of the human species? Write a call to action for an essay you might write about symbolism in The Great Gatsby. In this case the title of the novel, which normally would sit on its own in italics, reads in italics in the middle of another title. It's the other way around when the sentence goes the other way. 

A quotation marks title will change to a single quotes title where a quotation marks title appears within another quotation marks title simply as a way to cue the reader to where there is a beginning and ending of each title. It is a little more difficult to write than to see in action the first time.

Formatting Book Titles in Chicago Style vs. AP Style: Key Differences You Need to Know

Note that this rule is the same as that followed at Chicago Manual of Style and in APA, namely that a freestanding work, even a book, is set in italics. However, Chicago has specific rules for compound and serial titles, advising editors to use the "standalone" or "contained" logic defined in the opening sentence throughout a whole manuscript and not to flip-flop on it halfway through. 

AP style breaks the pattern completely, and this matters most for anyone who has a journalism assignment mixed in among English papers. Newsrooms almost never use italics. Quotation marks cover nearly every composition title in AP writing, book titles included, a holdover from old print and wire systems that could not reliably transmit italic formatting decades ago. Outside a class specifically requiring AP style, this exception rarely surfaces again.

Are Book Series Titles Italicized? Rules for Whole Series vs. Individual Book Titles

This distinction trips up confident writers more often than the basic rule does. The case of Harry Potter, for example, is pretty straightforward: most people have heard about it. If you say, “the Harry Potter series” or “the Harry Potter books”, then the italics are not underlined anywhere in the sentence. It serves more as a category label than as a title.

But each book in the series has its own self-contained story, and each title is given its own italic separately. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has been underlined. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows also comes in the tag of italic part. Every entry stands as a finished work on its own, regardless of belonging to a much larger set.

George R. R. Martin's fantasy series follows the exact same split. A Song of Ice and Fire stays plain when mentioned generically. A Game of Thrones, the actual first novel, is in full italics. Once that distinction between the umbrella name and each specific title beneath it settles in, applying the rule stops requiring conscious thought entirely.

Do You Italicize Movie Titles, TV Shows, Albums, and Other Media Types?

The standalone versus contained framework extends well past books. Are movie titles italicized the same way novels are, given that both count as complete works? They are. A movie needs nothing beyond itself to function as a finished piece, so its title gets italics without exception.

A television series (TV shows), considered as a whole, earns italics for the same reason: it operates as a self contained, ongoing work. Individual episodes flip that logic, mirroring how individual chapters behave inside a book. A single episode is a smaller piece housed inside a larger series, which places it squarely inside quotation marks.

Music runs on an identical structure. An album is a complete work, so italics apply. A single song pulled from that album belongs to something larger, so quotation marks take over there instead. By the third or fourth comparison, the logic tends to stop requiring any real thought at all.

Do You Italicize Article Titles in Academic Essays and Research Papers?

No, quite come to think of it, and everybody, when they first hear it comes as a surprise because what you read in the printed paper ought to be in italics. A relatively short piece of writing (such as a newspaper article, glossy magazine or journal article, or article in a peer-reviewed journal) that develops a longer piece of writing. The name of the publication is set in italics (italicization denotes typographical emphasis) and the title in quotation marks (also called quotation marks) since it is the relationship between the two containers that is emphasized.

A sentence which merges both rules could sound like:

Last month, The New York Times ran an article titled "Ten Tips for Better Sleep.

Both the formatting rules are working correctly, with quotation marks around the specific article, and italics around the larger publication around the specific article. 

4 Essential Formatting Exceptions: Religious Texts, Titles Within Titles, and Punctuation Rules

All of these consistent rules have exceptions, and a few of the exceptions occur frequently enough in student writing to warrant special consideration.

1. Religious Texts: These kinds of Texts are completely out of the picture from the question of italics versus quotation marks. The Bible, the Quran, and the Torah are not treated as such, because their style guides treat them like proper nouns, and their names are not italicized or quoted, as with other nouns.

2. Titles Within Titles: Titles within titles (as in the example from MLA above) create a small puzzle! If the titles are in a larger and non-italicized title, the italicized titles are placed in italics again. Single quotation marks are used where normally two sets of quotation marks would be used and the ending of a quote and beginning of a new one will be discernable to the reader.

3. Question Mark and Punctuation Placement: If a question mark or punctuation is needed as part of the title then it will be put in the appropriate position. 

There are questions in the title of the book, such as actually: A book with a question mark in its title, e.g. Are You There God? That is the 'question mark' in the italics for It Is Me, Margaret, since it is part of the title. Any punctuation which goes with the sentence is not also formatted. 

4. Standalone Titles on Cover Pages: Most readers will remember the end of Beloved long after the book is over. The comma is part of the sentence, not Toni Morrison's title, and so isn't part of the quotation at all.

If the title is the only thing on its line on a cover page (or title slide), nine times out of ten you should not italicize it or use quotation marks. Or, if it is a title, then it can be really redundant to indicate it through formatting. 

How to Format Book Titles When You Cannot Use Italics in Plain Text

Writing does not always happen inside a document with full formatting available. Text messages strip formatting automatically. Plenty of social media platforms and plain text web forms do the same, and some citation software fields behave identically.

Underlining remains a working fallback, particularly by hand. Inside plain text digital spaces, wrapping a title in asterisks, something like *The Great Gatsby*, reads as an immediately recognizable substitute to most people who encounter it. Quotation marks work as a last resort too, though they should never fully replace italics whenever real formatting is genuinely available.

Quick Reference Chart: Italics vs. Quotation Marks Examples for Quick Checking