Underline or Italicize? | Writing Review

When writing, there are several things that need to be either italicized if typing, or underlined if writing. Here is a list of things that need to be italicized: Books, Long poems, Speeches, Movies, TV shows, Plays, Long musical pieces, Magazines, Names of space shuttles, Names of planes, as well as Names of ships. Italicizing/Underlining can also be used for emphasis. For example, “That was mine!” The use of italicizing helps stress that the item was the speaker’s possession. Italicizing/Underlining can also be used to talk about a word. For example, “I don’t like saying you when arguing, it makes people defensive.” Also, whenever a foreign word shows up, it is best to italicize/underline to help point out that word. “Everything is fantastico brother.”

Italicizing and Underlining

Italicizing and Underlining

There are certain words and titles that need to be italicized. When typing, these words would be in italics, but when writing it out by hand, these words just need to be underlined, because it is too difficult to write words in italics by hand. Here are the words and titles that need to be italicized or underlined.

The titles of books, the titles of poems (Long poems. The ones that could be a book by themselves.), speeches (particularly famous speeches), the titles of movies, the titles of TV shows, plays, long musical pieces, and magazines.

Space shuttles, planes, and ships, like the name of a space shuttle, the name of a plane, and the name of a ship all need to be in italics, or underlined if written by hand. Some words need to be in italics if you want to place a particular emphasis on that word. If someone were saying “Come here!” they could underline that word or put it in italics. If a word is expressed as a word in a sentence, then it needs to be put in italics.

If you spelled “basically” wrong, the writer is not using the word “basically” to express anything in the sentence. They are actually talking about the word “basically”. That’s why it’s underlined. Also, there are many foreign words that are part of the English language almost, because they’re used so frequently.

Any foreign words or phrases that are not very familiar in the English language need to be underlined or placed in italics, like in this case: “edificio” needs to be underlined. Those are the important things to remember when it comes to putting words in italics.



by Mometrix Test Preparation | Last Updated: January 14, 2021