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20.6: Quotation Marks and Italics

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    223638
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    Quotation Marks Use 1:

    Use quotation marks to indicate dialogue in a story.

    Examples:

    • "I should probably clean all of the essays out of my car,” the teacher thought at the end of the semester.
    • The teacher replied, “If you would only do the course reading, you would be performing better in the course.”

    In these sentences, the quotation marks indicate that someone other than the writer of the sentences is thinking or speaking the words inside them. The reader only has to look for the subjects for the verbs “thought” and “replied” to know who is responsible for those words.

    Quotation Marks Use 2:

    Use quotation marks to show language is borrowed directly from a source.

    In the example below, note also the in-text citation that follows it, indicating to the reader the page number where that quote appears in the book by Krakauer.

    Example: Jon Krakauer notes, “It is helpful to look at counterparts from distant places and a century far removed” (97).

    Quotation Marks Use 3:

    Use quotation marks to indicate the title of an article, short story, poem, song, YouTube video, or other short work.

    Example: For more information on the story of Chris McCandless, whose life Krakauer details in his book, see the YouTube video “What Happened to Chris McCandless?”

    Italics Use 1:

    Use italics for emphasis.

    Example: The sky was falling, and Chicken Little was quite certain of it

    Italics Use 2:

    Use italics to indicate the title of a book, film, record album, entire magazine, entire newspaper, or website.

    Example: The student liked to look at the library database Newsstand to read their favorite newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, for free.

    Formatting Titles: Italics and Quotation Marks

    Both quotation marks and italics are used to denote titles, but there are specific rules that govern which ones you use for what kinds of texts. See the chart below for a summary, but italics are used for whole works and quotation marks are used for parts of works and shorter works.

    Italics "Quotation Marks"
    Denote that the text is an entire work Denote that the text is part of a larger whole
    Book Chapter in a book
    Academic journal Article in an academic journal
    An entire magazine (Time or Sports Illustrated) Article in a magazine
    An entire newspaper Article in a newspaper
    A website A webpage
    A library database (Opposing Viewpoints or Proquest) An article published by the database
    Television series Episode in a television series
    Podcast title Episode of a podcast
    Film Commercial
    Album Song

    See this page for video tutorial help with italics, underlining, and quotation marks from Khan Academy.


    20.6: Quotation Marks and Italics is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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