Titles of Literary and Artistic Works

Titles and subtitles of books, proceedings, collections, periodicals, and newspapers are italicized, or set in roman type in a sentence otherwise italicized. Examples:

• Look for the Oxford English Dictionary definition.
• An article about her appears in The New York Times.

Titles of articles and features in periodicals and newspapers, chapter titles, and titles of short stories and essays are enclosed in quotation marks. Examples:

• I occasionally look at “Elementary Rules of Usage” in Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.

Titles of operas, oratorios, and other long musical compositions are italicized.

Titles of songs and other short compositions are enclosed in quotation marks. Longer works with generic titles are set in roman type, but are not enclosed in quotation marks.

Titles of movies and of television and radio programs and series are italicized. A single episode in a television or radio series is set in roman type and enclosed in quotation marks.

Titles of most poems are set in roman type and enclosed in quotation marks. A very long poetic work, especially one constituting a book, is italicized and not enclosed in quotation marks.

Titles of plays are italicized. Parts of plays are lowercased and set in roman type.

Titles of paintings, drawings, photographs, statues, and other works of art are italicized.