ITALICIZE THE TITLES OR NAMES OF SUBSTANTIAL WORKS

Use italics for the names of books, journals, magazines, newspapers, plays, movies, radio and television programs, symphonies, ballets, albums, paintings, and sculptures.

The International Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law presents research in and analysis of forensic linguistics.

The movie The Hobbit follows the storyline of the first third of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book of the same name.

See for more information about the use of italics in the names of works.

ITALICIZE FOREIGN WORDS

English has adopted words from many other languages. Bagel, kindergarten, pajamas, and salsa were once considered foreign words; now, however, they are included in English dictionaries, so there is no need to italicize them. Italicize foreign words that do not appear in the dictionary.

Steven’s daadi and dada — that’s Hindi for “grandmother” and “grandfather” — loved their gift and asked Steven to use it to take a photograph of them to send to their family.

USE ITALICS FOR EMPHASIS

“That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard!” he told them.

When your emphasis will be obvious to the reader or when you’ve already added a word to create emphasis, do not italicize. The word do in sentences like the following is inherently emphatic:

I do hope my grandparents will be able to figure out how to use the iPad.

To decide whether italics are useful or overkill, take them out, read the sentence aloud or in your mind, and see whether the natural emphasis is the same as (or better than) the emphasis with the italics.

If you decide to italicize certain elements (such as poetry extracts or taglines) for design reasons, remove the italics from the words that you would ordinarily italicize: