If you're confused about when you should use italics and underlining in your writing, look no further. This article will teach you everything you need to know about using both formatting styles.
In short:
This guide is part of our free online Grammar Book.
Italics and underlining are two ways of formatting your text to make certain words, phrases, or sentences stand out.
They're actually interchangeable, but the thing is, we primarily use italics nowadays, and underlining has pretty much become redundant, with one exception: handwriting. Think about it; can you imagine trying to italicize your text by hand? That's some highly-skilled stuff! That's why, instead, when handwriting, you can underline your text if you want it to stand out.
Okay, so italics and underlining help parts of your text stand out. But for what purpose? Let's find out.
There are many instances when you might want to use italics to make your text stand out. Let's look at those one by one.
When citing titles of works in your text, you'll want to make it stand out; otherwise, how will your reader know it's a title and not just a continuation of your sentence?
That's where italics come in. Well, technically, there are two forms of formatting you can use for titles of works:
We actually did a whole article on this, so you can check it out if you want to know more, but here's the long and short of it.
So, the title of a TV show is an example of a longer work that should be italicized, and the title of a podcast episode is an example of a shorter work that should be placed within quotation marks.
Let's look at an example of each one:
My favorite show of all times has to be How I Met Your Mother.
Have you seen the final episode, "Last Forever"?
Notice how I used a title case for both titles. Here are some more examples of titles of longer works that require italics:
My work has been published in the Journal of English Linguistics.
I'm reading The Shining at the moment, and it's terrifying!
I can't believe you've never watched The Pursuit of Happyness.
Yep, this one is quite specific and seemingly a little random, but what can I say? That's how it sometimes goes with the English language!
Famous ships, aircraft, trains, space shuttles, cars, and so on all must have their name written not only in title case but also in italics.
The first spaceflight to land us on the moon was Apollo 11.
I would have loved to have traveled on the Orient Express.
The HMS Victory was long known as Lord Nelson's flagship.
Italicize the foreign words in your text to distinguish them from the English words. The exception to this rule is for words that have pretty much been absorbed into the English language, like 'kosher,' 'status quo,' and faux pas.' Admittedly, it's a pretty fine line between words that are considered to be part of the English language and those that are not, and it often comes down to personal choice.
While it's a little ambiguous, one thing's for sure:
Here is an example:
She told me "A bientot" and I just smiled and pretended to understand what she meant.
NOTE: Quotation marks are also used here since it's a direct quote.
Here are some more examples:
The expression Carpe Diem never really meant that much to me.
Hasta la vista guys, enjoy your trip!
We hired a tuk tuk to drive us around Bangkok all day.
The same principle applies if you want to distinguish sounds from words.
Nothing worse than being woken up by the zzz sound of a mosquito hovering around your ear.
I love the ping sound the microwave makes when my food is ready.
Witnesses at the scene said they heard a loud boom.
Italics are also great for emphasizing words. Some of the reasons you might want to emphasize a word include:
Yeah, Johnny, why do you always leave the office early?
What do you mean when you say you want me to be patient?
The show was incredible, and I don't use the word incredible lightly.
Note that in most of these situations, you could also use quotation marks, so it's up to you to pick one or the other. Both are acceptable.
Feel free to make up your own rules, too! Like with all things linguistics, it's always encouraged to get creative. Don't get too bogged down by the rules!
For instance, at Writing Tips Institute, we use italics to make examples stand out in our articles. Okay, granted, I haven't done that here due to the topic of this article because I needed the words in italics to stand out. But if you take a look at other articles, you'll see that the examples are written in italics, and that's just a stylistic choice we made. And we try to stay consistent with that.
So we've established that underlining is a bit outdated and mostly reserved for handwriting. However, I wanted to include a section on underlining because there is still a case to be made for underlining. It helps your text stand out if you've already used other tools, like italics, hyphens and dashes, parentheses, quotation marks, etc.
For instance:
The choice is yours!
You could also underline your headlines or sub-headlines. Whatever you pick, just be sure to stay consistent: if you underline one subheadline, you should underline them all.
Moreover, some style guides do still advocate for using underlining in your typed works. If you're unsure, check your style guide. If you don't have one, good news, you can decide for yourself!
NOTE: Text processors automatically underline hyperlinks (and often also change the text color).
That concludes this article on using italics and underlining in your writing. I hope you found it helpful.
Let's summarize what we've learned:
If you enjoyed this article, you'd probably love our Grammar Book, a free online database of grammar articles just like this one.
We encourage you to share this article on Twitter and Facebook. Just click those two links - you'll see why.
It's important to share the news to spread the truth. Most people won't.
