When should a title be italicized?

Here is another interesting question. From what i understand, italics replaced the need for underlining for books and using quotation marks for periodicals.  Is this true.

What about leaflets or handouts. 

"The tracking form and Dental Progress Notes were changed."

Dental Progress Notes may not even need to be capitalized. But the top of the page says, "Dental Progress Note."

Sooo.... Is this a title of a document or just a name that should be in lower case?

What about subheading in an article.  Should they be italicized?  "Under the subheading Job Losses in 2005..."

Here is another interesting situation.

"The Adult Medicine History and Physical Form, Nursing Assessment and Provider Peer Review forms were revised in 2005."

Do any of these forms need italicizing?  Or do the not even need to be capitalized? All of these are simply forms in the medical records for our patients. It think they should be lower case and not even considered for italics.

When i was in school we used to set book titles off with commas. This does not seem to be typical, however.

For example, "Carlos Muno published the book, Math and Statistics, in 2005."  Most leave out the commas.

This becomes practical where you have question marks and exclamation points at the end of a title. For example, "Many people have found the following article, How Can You Better Understand Your Doctor?, helpful in the January 4, 1990 Awake! magazine. In this case it is better to leave off the commas.

But what about a series of articles?

"For more information, please review the Young People Ask... articles How Can I Cope with Acne?,  Twelve Reasons Why You Should See a Dentist!, and What Does Current Medical Research Say?"

In such cases, commas after a punctuation marks can't be avoided.

thanks for your comments!

Typographic style varies for title case, use of italics, and reference conventions. Underline used to be used in place of italics on typewriters but now it indicates a hyperlink. Some will use both quotes and italic, or underline and italic, which is simply "Bad."

Many book publishers refer to the Chicago Manual of Style.

You can also refer to other resources, e.g., Words into Type.

There is no absolute answer to your question, although you will find agreement for certain conventions in various style guides.

Your client should have a predetermined style standard. If not, you might recommend a standard for their publications.

Eric
conehouse.com