When To Use Italics ?
Case 1
Titles of newspapers, magazines, and books should be put in italics. Articles, essays, stories, chapters, and poems should be enclosed in quotation marks.
Example
Her job requires her to keep up with the Times Of India, The Hindu, and the Economics Times every day.
"Song of Myself" is the first poem in Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Every year Consumer Reports runs "Best Buy Gifts" in the November issue.
Case 2
Titles of plays and movies should be put in italics. Television and radio programs should be enclosed in quotation marks.
Example
Shakespeare's Hamlet
The Playboy of the Western World
the movie High Noon
Huston's The Maltese Falcon
"Forest Gump"
"60 Minutes"
Case 3
Titles of works of art and long musical works should be put in italics. Shorter works such as songs should be enclosed in quotation marks. When the form of a musical work is used as its title, neither italics nor quotation marks are used.
Example
Grant Wood's American Gothic
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper
Handel's Messiah
Don Giovanni by Mozart
Porgy and Bess
Case 4
The names of ships and airplanes should be put in italics.
Example
the aircraft carrier Intrepid
Lindbergh's The Spirit of St. Louis
Case 5
Words and phrases from a foreign language should be put in italics. Accompanying translations are often enclosed in quotation marks. Words of foreign origin that have become familiar in an English context should not be italicized.
Example
As a group, these artists appear to be in the avant-garde. They are not, however, to be thought of as enfants terribles, or "terrible children," people whose work is so outrageous as to shock or embarrass.
Case 6
Words used as words, and letters used as letters, should be put in italics.
Example
I can never remember how to spell broccoli.
Be sure to pronounce the final e in Nike.
Case 7
Italics are sometimes used to indicate that a word or words should be pronounced with extra emphasis.
Example
The boss is very hard to get along with today.
Madhu loaned the tape to Priya, and she gave it to Kranthi.
Sample Usage
Have you seen the latest issue of Wisden Digest?
The word basically is often unnecessary and should be removed.
I just read Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.
3 IDIOTS promo was shown on network TV last week.
My favorite book is Five Point Someone
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