This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions. Please ensure that any edits to this page reflect consensus.

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[edit] Italics

Italic type (text like this) is generally used for the following categories of titles:

• Certain scientific names
  • Genera and all lower taxa (but not higher taxa)
  • Genes (but not proteins encoded by genes)
• Court cases
• Named vehicles
  • Trains and locomotives
  • Ships
  • Ship classes
• Works of art and artifice
  • Art exhibitions
  • Books
  • Cantatas and motets
  • Comic strips and webcomics
  • Computer and video games (but not other software)
  • Feature-length films and documentaries
  • Long or epic poems
  • Multi-episode television serials
  • Musical albums
  • Musicals
  • Operas, operettas, oratorios
  • Orchestral works
  • Paintings, sculptures and other works of visual art
  • Periodicals (newspapers, journals, and magazines)
  • Plays
  • Television series and serials

Abbreviations of the above should also be italicized. If the title is also a link, you should usually place the italic markup outside the brackets, but see the Titanic example below for a special case.

[edit] Examples

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, DCL Command Language Manual
  • ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'', ''DCL Command Language Manual''
• Casablanca, Boccacio '70
  • ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]]'', ''Boccacio '70''
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show
  • ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]''
• Life magazine, Astounding Science Fiction
  • ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine, ''[[Astounding Science Fiction]]''
• RMS Titanic, USS Minnesota (BB-22), Apollo 11, The Legend of Zelda series. Only the name is italicized, not the classification or designation. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link.
  • [[RMS Titanic|RMS ''Titanic'']], [[USS Minnesota (BB-22)|USS ''Minnesota'' (BB-22)]], ''[[Apollo 11]]'', [[The Legend of Zelda series|''The Legend of Zelda'' series]]
• Escherichia, Escherichia coli, E. coli
  • ''[[Escherichia]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli]]'', ''[[Escherichia coli|E. coli]]''
• USS Toledo (CA-133) was a Baltimore class cruiser, HMAS Australia (1911) was an Indefatigable class battlecruiser. Only the class name is italicized, not the ship type. This link will require a pipe character (a "|"), as italics tags will not work within a link.
  Note that ship class names are not always italicised, for further information see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships).
  • [[USS Toledo (CA-133)|USS ''Toledo'' (CA-133)]] was a [[Baltimore class cruiser|''Baltimore'' class cruiser]], [[HMAS Australia (1911)|HMAS ''Australia'' (1911)]] was an [[Indefatigable class battlecruiser|''Indefatigable'' class battlecruiser]]
• Mouse Trap, The Incredible Machine, Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, HL2
  • ''[[Mouse Trap (arcade game)|Mouse Trap]]'', ''[[The Incredible Machine]]'', ''[[Baldur's Gate series|Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast]]'', ''[[Half-Life 2|HL2]]''
• Symphony No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"
  • ''[[Symphony]] No. 9 Op. 95 "From the New World"''
• Eldred v. Ashcroft, Plessy v. Ferguson
  • ''[[Eldred v. Ashcroft]]'', ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]''
• Action Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Beano, The Amazing Spider-Man
  • ''[[Action Comics]]'', ''[[Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]'', ''[[The Beano]]'', ''[[The Amazing Spider-Man]]''
• Peanuts, Penny Arcade
  • ''[[Peanuts]]'', ''[[Penny Arcade (webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]''
• An Unearthly Child, The Last Sontaran
  • ''[[An Unearthly Child]]'', ''[[The Last Sontaran]]''

[edit] Quotation marks

Italics are generally used only for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works should be enclosed in double quotation marks ("text like this"). This particularly applies to works that exist as a smaller part of a larger work. Examples of titles which are quoted:

• Articles, essays or papers
• Chapters of a longer work
• Entries in a longer work (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.)
• Short films and documentaries
• Single episodes of a television series
• Short poems
• Short stories
• Songs and singles

[edit] Additional markup

If a title is enclosed in quotation marks, do not include the quotation marks in any additional formatting markup. For example, if a title in qotation marks is the subject of a Wikipedia article and therefore marked boldface in the lead section, the quotation marks should not be boldface because they are not part of the title itself. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style — Punctuation.

[edit] Examples

• "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
• "Goober and Gomer Change a Tire"
• "Do's and Don'ts of Dating"
• "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
• "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "She's Leaving Home" appear on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• "The Germans" is an episode of the television programme Fawlty Towers

[edit] Neither

There are a few cases in which the title should be in neither italics nor quotation marks:

• Scriptures of large, well-known religions (see details below)
• Legal or constitutional documents (example: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms)
• Traditional games (example: hopscotch)
• Software other than games (example: iTunes)
• Commercial products other than media works (example: Cheerios)

[edit] Scripture

Scriptures of large, well-known religions should not normally be italicized. For example, the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ādi Granth, the Book of Mormon, or the Avesta. However, references to specific published versions of sacred texts should be italicized, such as the Authorized King James Version or the New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Many relatively obscure sacred texts are also generally italicized, particularly if the work is not likely to be well-known to the Wikipedia reader, if the work was first published in modern times and has not undergone substantial changes, or if it might be unclear that the title refers to a book. For example, The Urantia Book, the Satanic Bible, and Divine Principle should be italicized. Norse pagan scriptures, such as Gylfaginning, are also italicized.

[edit] Punctuation

When a title is italicized or enclosed in quotation marks, adjacent punctuation that is not part of the title itself should be placed outside the italic markup or quotation marks. For example, in the following two examples are correct because the punctuation is not part of the title:

• Johnson spoke often of Huckleberry Finn, his favorite novel. (The comma is not italic.)
• George Orwell's well-known essay, "Politics and the English Language", condemned the hypocrisy endemic in political writing and speech. (The commas are outside the quotation marks.)

Punctuation that is part of the title should be italicized or enclosed in quotation marks along with the rest of the title. For example, the comma and question mark are part of the title of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?