When we refer to another poster in our posts we always put the name in bold.
But what are we supposed to do for movie and book titles, and other works? I have sometimes seen them italicized, put in “quotation marks”, underlined or even bolded as well. How should I highlight Catcher in the Rye? Or a title chapter from it? Or an episode from a television show? Is there some MLA format for internet posts? It would be nice to have one.
Nitpick: You are talking about citations, so it’s “cite”, not “site”.
There is no established online protocol for citing others’ works, but you can still offer cites. How you do is a matter of preference. If it’s a website reference, you can link to it. If it’s a book, you could mention the author(s)'s name. I sometimes link the book’s title to its Amazon.com listing. If it’s a song or music compilation, you could give the singer, songwriter, group, or composer. If it’s a movie, you might want to link to its imdb.com listing. Or you can just mention whatever’s relevant to your point.
You can bold, underline, or italicize the text. Or leave it plain. You can follow any formatting style you choose-- no one’s declared a standard and no one’s enforcing a standard. For a lot of posts, providing those kinds of cites isn’t even necessary. But you should do what you feel is appropriate.
Well, I meant more how do we format the names, titles, etc. then actually cite them (pg 324. 1996 ed. etc. etc.).
Like I said, you can do whatever you want, dude. It’s a matter of personal preference. Since you’re not composing a work assignment nor are the mods explicitly telling you to do it a certain way, it doesn’t matter. Underline it, bold it, italicize it-- whatever you think is right.
There’s no rule here on the SBMB. I use bold so people can pick out the reference, italics for emphasis, and quotes when I don’t want to be bothered with the code.
This ain’t an English exam. It’s a discussion board.
I’ve struggled with this same question. Well, struggled is probably too strong of a word.
Anyway, the titles of books, movies etc. are rarely confused with usernames, so my personal preference is to use the bolding tags.
If my post involves a lot of titles AND usernames, then I’ll use the underlining tags for the titles to mitigate any confusion.
Using italics or quotes for titles makes the text too messy for my taste.
Bottom line it’s just a visual preference.
I use the same constructs that are standard in written communication, as well as I can remember them. Except when I’m too lazy, which is often. And no one on the SDMB is grading you, so it does fall back to personal preference.
Book, periodical, newspaper, movie, or artwork titles: Italic (or underlined)
Short stories, articles, chapters: In quotation marks
Long poems and musical works: Italics
Short poems and musical works: quotes
Holy books, documents: no special format
Examples:
The orchestra played Handel’s Messiah.
“A Long Extpected Party” is the first chapter of Lord of the Rings
Let me give you a quote from Paradise Lost by John Milton.
I read a review of Die Another Day in the New York Times.
Western civilization has been greatly influenced by the Bible and documents like the Magna Carta.
“Beat It” was my favorite song from Thriller.