6.05 Titles of publications and works of art

Italicize the titles of books, pamphlets, published reports and studies, plays, operas and long musical compositions, paintings, sculptures, novels, films, long poems, newspapers and periodicals:

• book
  • The Canadian Style
• pamphlet
  • Keeping the Heat In
• report
  • Public Accounts of Canada
• play
  • Murder in the Cathedral
• opera
  • Rigoletto
• symphony
  • the Pastoral Symphony
• painting
  • Voice of Fire
• novel
  • Cabbagetown
• long poem
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• sculpture
  • David
• newspaper
  • The Globe and Mail
• periodical
  • Saturday Night

For the title of a major work within another title, two possibilities exist:

• Report on the Application of the "Alternative Fuels Act"

or

• Report on the Application of the Alternative Fuels Act

Titles of publications and works of art, Exception

Titles of scientific periodicals are usually abbreviated and set in roman type (see 9.08 Compiling a bibliographic entry(c)).

Do not italicize unofficial titles:

• A record of the debate can be found in Hansard.

Titles of articles, short poems and short stories, songs, arias and other short musical compositions, and radio and television programs are set in roman type and enclosed in quotation marks:

• article
  • "The Life Beyond"
• aria
  • "Pace, pace, Mio Dio"
• musical composition
  • "Stille Nacht"
• television program
  • "Street Legal"

9.11 Title

Transcribe the title as it appears on the title page; the original capitalization and punctuation need not be retained. Italicize titles of published works such as books or periodicals. If the work being listed is published within another document, such as an article in a periodical, set the title off in quotation marks:

• Horsman, Jenny. "Something in My Mind Besides the Everyday": Women and Literacy in Nova Scotia. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1990.
• Clement, Lesley D. "Artistry in Mavis Gallant’s ‘Green Water, Green Sky’: The Composition of Structure, Pattern, and Gyre." Canadian
  Literature 129 (Summer 1991), pp. 57–73.

If the title is in two or more languages, transcribe the titles as they appear, separating them with an oblique (/) and a space on each side of the oblique:

• The Future of Canadian Programming and the Role of Private Television: Keeping Canada on the Information Highway / L’avenir des émissions canadiennes et le rôle de la télévision privée : Maintien du Canada sur l’autoroute électronique. Report to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. March 1995.

See 9.06 Translation for information on translated titles.

Any subtitle should follow the title after a colon and a space. If the title and subtitle are italicized, so is the colon:

• Schwartz, Ellen. Born A Woman: Seven Canadian Singer-Songwriters. Vancouver: Polestar Press, 1988.

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TERMIUM Plus^®, the Government of Canada's terminology and linguistic data bank
Writing tools – The Canadian Style
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