Format for movie titles?

[traceyk65]

I have seen so many different formats for movie titles on these boards. Is there a "correct" format for here? MLA says either underline or italicize, but I see all caps, boldface, quotation marks etc too.

[slaytonf]

I haven't worried too much about formal style here.  As long as the message gets across, that's good enough for me.

[lzcutter]

I have seen so many different formats for movie titles on these boards. Is there a "correct" format for here? MLA says either underline or italicize, but I see all caps, boldface, quotation marks etc too.

 

Part of the reason for the different styles may be hold-overs from the old boards. At one time, the italics function didn't work properly and people began bolding the names of films as a work around.

 

Now, I know in my case, it's purely habit.

[FredCDobbs]

MLA says either underline or italicize, but I see all caps, boldface, quotation marks etc too.

 

MLA and other text guidelines are generally for the old print media of newspapers and magazines, You know, the stuff we read back in the 19th Century.

 

The main TCM dot COM webpage uses different formats on the same page, but in different sections of the same page, such as ALL CAPS and BOLD, or upper and lower case, such as Gone With The Wind. Sometimes I see upper and lower case and BOLD, such as on the SCHEDULE page. The formats are standardized in each page section, but they vary from section to section.

 

For our message board headlines and general post text, just make it clear that you are mentioning a movie title inside a headline or sentence, such as "Did you like GONE WITH THE WIND?" or "Did you like Gone With The Wind?" You would not want to say "Did you like gone with the wind?"

 

Oh, and PS: An underline in computer text is often a HOT LINK and is not the same as an underline in an old newspaper.

[ValentineXavier]

I use bold for film titles, italics for TV and song titles. When I abbreviate film titles, I use the same case as when spelling them out: GwtW. Makes the lesser know ones easier to interpret, IMO.

[traceyk65]

I just used the MLA rules becasue that was what I was taught in HS.  

So I guess the consensus is, anything goes? OK, I can work with that.

[FredCDobbs]

I just used the MLA rules becasue that was what I was taught in HS.  

So I guess the consensus is, anything goes? OK, I can work with that.

 

That’s what I was taught in high school too, but that was back in the days of typewriters, and typewriters didn’t have any italic keys, so the underline method was used in typed manuscripts to indicate a book title, movie title, song title, etc., and the final newspaper and book typesetters could translate the underlined manuscript text into italics for final publication.

[DownGoesFrazier]

I use bold for film titles, italics for TV and song titles. When I abbreviate film titles, I use the same case as when spelling them out: GwtW. Makes the lesser know ones easier to interpret, IMO.

Since I don't know how to do italics, I use quotation marks for TV and song titles.