Quotations and titles

Some grammar rules (and embarrassing mistakes!) transcend the uniqueness of different regions and style guides. This new International Grammar section by OnlineBookClub.org ultimately identifies those rules thus providing a simple, flexible rule-set, respecting the differences between regions and style guides. You can feel free to ask general questions about spelling and grammar. You can also provide example sentences for other members to proofread and inform you of any grammar mistakes.

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Henry Patrovic
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Quotations and titles

Post by Henry Patrovic »

I give “title of the book” a number of stars.
The editor said that I should remove the quotation marks around the title. This confuses me as another review I wrote had that exact same sentence and it wasn’t counted as a mistake. Do you guys use quotation marks or do you just write the title?
Janet Kimetto
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Post by Janet Kimetto »

Henry Patrovic wrote: 23 Oct 2022, 12:23 I give “title of the book” a number of stars.
The editor said that I should remove the quotation marks around the title. This confuses me as another review I wrote had that exact same sentence and it wasn’t counted as a mistake. Do you guys use quotation marks or do you just write the title?
Hi there,

I don't know if you got the help you needed, but you only need to italicize the title. You don't need to use quotation marks in addition to putting it in italics.

I give title of the book x out of 5 stars.
“Be wary. Be clever. Be good.”
Rachel Gillig, One Dark Window
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kipper_
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Post by kipper_ »

Quotation marks should never go around a book title. If the first editor did not count you off for this, it would have been a mistake on their part. Quotation marks are used for smaller pieces within larger ones (so the name of a chapter, for instance). Things like song titles (part of an album) or poems (part of a collection of poems). Sometimes, people will use quotation marks because italics are hard to format in some online settings. In those situations, if you can't italicize, it's better to not use any additional punctuation. For OBC reviews, use italics.
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