Italics, Inverted Commas or Underline?

Should the following in-text references be underlined, formatted in italics or put in inverted commas? (According to The Chicago Manual of Style.)

1. Book title
2. Journal article title
3. Title of a famous speech
4. Name of a work of art
5. Conference talk title

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Answers

The overriding rule under The Chicago Manual of Style is to italicise the name of free-standing works (books, TV series, operas, lengthy stand-alone poems and the like). You would then use inverted commas when the title forms part of a larger work (chapters, episodes, songs on albums and poems in collections, for instance). It can sometimes be hard to make a call because you hit a grey area. Also, certain works may appear as stand-alone works sometimes and as part of a collection on other occasions. If this happens and you can’t double check (e.g. in an exam) then make a decision you can justify and be consistent. Underlining is outdated; I just wrote that to try to catch you out.

1. Book title: italicise (chapters would go in inverted commas).
2. Journal article title: inverted commas (with the title of the journal requiring italics).
3. Title of a famous speech: italicise (bog-standard speeches go in inverted commas).
4. Name of a work of art: italicise (the name of an exhibit or collection of works would also be italicised).
5. Conference talk title: inverted commas (the conference name would be written in title case, without italics).