Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The text of captions should not be specially formatted (with italics, for example), except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text. Several discussions (e.g. this one) have failed to reach a consensus on whether "stage directions" such as (right) or (behind podium) should be in italics, set off with commas, etc. Any one article ...
For titles of books, articles, poems, and so forth, use italics or quotation marks following the guidance for titles. Italics can also be added to mark up non-English terms (with the {} template), for an organism's scientific name, and to indicate a words-as-words usage.
Do not put quotations in italics. Quotation marks (or block quoting) alone are sufficient and the correct ways to denote quotations. Italics should only be used if the quoted material would otherwise call for italics. Use italics within quotations to reproduce emphasis that exists in the source material or to indicate the use of non-English words.
The quotation must be useful and aid understanding of the subject; irrelevant quotations should be removed. All quotations must be attributed to their sources. Unlike fair-use images, quotations are permitted on talk pages and project pages where they are useful for discussion but the requirements listed above should still be observed.
These cases are well-established conventions recognized in most style guides. Do not apply italics to other categories or instances because you feel they are creative or artful (e.g. game or sport moves, logical arguments, "artisanal" products, schools of practice or thought, Internet memes, aphorisms, etc.).
If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear in an English language dictionary. As per the guide to writing better Wikipedia articles, foreign words should be used sparingly, and native spellings in non-Latin scripts may be included in parentheses.
The question of italics for titles of major works in non-Latin scripts has come up before, for example Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting/Archive 6#More clarity may be needed re titles of works in foreign languages, a discussion that concluded 20 June 2018.
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, [1] [2] speech marks, [3] quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name.