ITALICS VS. QUOTES.

I am often confused as to when to use quotes or italics.  So I decided to compile what I’ve found and put it in one place.

I’m pleased to share with you what I have found.  Just remember, that this is a work in progress.

***

Complete literary works published individually require italics. This applies to book titles, web sites, films, journals, magazines, newspapers, and plays. Nearly every other short literary work takes quotation marks: newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, book chapters, poems, song titles, television shows, and radio shows. Don’t forget to italicize the names of spacecraft, aircraft, ships, and trains.  (http://www.llrx.com/columns/grammar11.htm)

The names of films, videos, and music albums, are italicized.

Foreign phrases should be italicized:  Voila! I did it!

TV episodes are enclosed in quotes:  “Paint Me a Murder,” from Murder She Wrote was on TV today. (Murder She Wrote is a series, a complete work, and therefore takes italics.)

When using quotation marks, punctuation always goes INSIDE of the quotation mark.  Note:  punctuation inside or outside of the quotation marks may depend on whether you apply American or British rules.  These apply to American conventions:

“I’m having a very pleasant day,” she stated.  Never use double punctuation however:  Looking across the table Susan stated, “I’m having a very pleasant day.”  (You don’t need an extra period here.)

Quotes within quotes should be single and the punctuation goes outside of the single quote:

“Do you know what she said?  She said ‘that dress looks awful on you’.”

Thoughts are typed in italics:

Mortified and with shoes in hand, Oma Mae paddled flatfooted to her office door, her burning feet, smacking heavily on the tiled hallway floor. “WOMEN DO NOT HAVE HOT FLASHES!  THEY HAVE POWER SURGES,” flashed across her brain, the words throbbing in her head like a strobe light on the set of Saturday Night Fever.  What in the hell would Gail Sheehy know about hot flashes!  I’ll lay odds she was popping estrogen pills like they were M&M’s when she wrote that one, Oma Mae blustered hotly, her breath so hot she quickly sipped it back in to keep it from scorching the tender insides of her feverish lips.