How To Punctuate Titles of Books

It is sometimes very hard to punctuate titles of books and other literary works within your writing. Interestingly, a number of highly skilled writers often face hardships keeping in check with these rules. A few rules are italicized or underlined, and other titles are used in quotation marks. On the other hand, there are still some that need no punctuation at all. There are a lot of ways to punctuates titles of books and other works with good effect.

Instructions

  • 1

    Larger works are printed in Italics

    Books, CDs, television series, published collections and other large works are mostly italicized. Moreover, they can also be underlined. This rule is a very old one that dates back to typewriters when it was very difficult to italicize words in your writing.

    The titles of major works of art and books like the Mona Lisa are also italicized or underlined. The hard and fast rule is that large works should always be underlined or italicized, while smaller works or parts of works can be used in quotation marks.

  • 2

    Use quotation for smaller works

    Smaller works can be considered such as chapters from books, a piece from a newspaper or a magazine, individual episodes of a TV show, or a song from an album. The title of a photograph should also be put under quotation marks. These are mostly the smaller parts of major works; if the name for the larger work was used in your writing, it needs to be italicized.

    On the other hand, when placing quotation marks in a sentence, you need to know that commas, periods and other punctuation marks are used inside the final quotation mark.

  • 3

    Other important information

    There are a few titles that do not need to be punctuated. They should be capitalized, and do not require to be underlined, italicized or used in quotation marks. Some examples of these are works like The Koran or The Bible along with the names of major monuments and buildings. Furthermore, it is vital to translate the title in English language.

    If your work is in a foreign language with a non-English title, you should translate the name into English. However, you can stick with the foreign name if it is famous already. Also make sure you remember the capitalization rules. Lots of words need to be capitalized, when punctuating names in your writing. It is necessary to capitalize the major words, specially the first and last words of the title.

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