Italics vs Quotation Marks

The governing distinction in English style is container versus contents. A work that stands on its own — a book, a film, an album, a newspaper, a play, a painting, a podcast series — is set in italics. A work contained within one of those — a chapter, an article, a song, an episode, a poem in a collection — is set in quotation marks.

So: Moby-Dick but "The Whiteness of the Whale"; The New Yorker but "Hills Like White Elephants"; Abbey Road but "Come Together". The same title can switch form depending on how it is published: a long poem issued as its own volume, like Paradise Lost, takes italics, while a short poem in a collection takes quotation marks.

Italics have a second, separate job: emphasis, foreign-language terms not naturalised in English, and words used as words ('the word set has many senses'). Quotation marks used for that last job — 'the word "set"' — are also acceptable in some house styles, but mixing both conventions in one document is not.

Common mistake: italicising and quoting the same title at once, or using quotation marks for a book because the title feels like a phrase. When in doubt, ask whether the thing was published as a whole item; if yes, italics.