Italics, Quotes and Caps in Creative Copy

As creatives, we’re constantly confronted with a jumble of product names, terminology, titles and quotations that raise confounding questions about the proper way to use typography in our documents and designs.

This post can help you decide how a specific text passage should appear. It is by no means a definitive nor complete reference dissertation on writing syntax. Instead, this is a quick reference guide for properly adding emphasis to text passages in your designs.

Using Italics and Quote Marks

In modern marketing, italic type is a modern method that replaces underlined and bolded text in older typographic styles. They are commonly used to emphasize a specific word or passage, as well as for the titles of major works such as books, music albums, plays and films.

Quote marks are used most often for shorter works such as essays, articles, short stories, songs, poems and of course, for quotations. Quotes are also used for components of larger works, such as book chapters and television episodes.

Italicizing Long Passages

One of the great design principles in using italic type is to do so judiciously. But design templates and standards sometime call for the use of italics in longer passages that include:

• Opening paragraphs or abstracts
• Image captions
• Quotations, especially when they appear as inset paragraphs

Since the main reason for using italics is to emphasize words and short passages, overuse of italics — such as for entire sentences or paragraphs — defeats that purpose and makes them hard to read. So try to avoid italicizing long passages whenever you can.

The remainder of this post provides a quick summary of various text passages used in modern writing and the most common syntax used to present those passages.

Consult with Authorities

The text treatments summarized above are by no means definitive, and these conventions are sometimes overridden by style guides and requirements of organizations and publications.

If you’re writing for a scholarly endeavor, it’s best to consult with academic authorities. They often have standard formats for research and academic papers with specific style and syntax requirements.

Similarly, if you are doing technical or marketing writing for an organization, there is a reasonable chance that they have established style and formatting rules for their publications.