A website title in italics so...

By sguzik on Mon, 06/01/2020 - 06:52

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My question is more of an editorial question than a citation question.  A website is treated as a book in a citation thus the title is italicized.  This is absolutely sensible.

However, I come across genealogical reports or other work written by others  in which a website is mentioned by title in the text but not in italics.  Citations in the same piece of writing often will have the same title in italics.
When I edit a these I will "correct" the title by placing it in italics.  Yesterday I tried to find a reference that supported this. The only reference I could find was in the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) which does not support it.  (Apparently they went from no italics in the 15th edition, to using  italics in the 16th, and are now back to no italics in the 17th.)

It seems to me that italicizing a website title in text should follow the same logic as in a citation.

Thus my question, what is the recommended practice and where can I find a reference besides CMOS?

(The writing in question is not for a journal publication with its own set of guidelines.)

Submitted byEEon Mon, 06/01/2020 - 09:35

sguzik, you stated the situation well: Italicizing a website title in text should follow the same logic as in a citation. That logic is sometimes blurred by the fact that a website title is exactly the same as the agency or corporate entity that created the site. In our text:

  • if we are referencing the agency or the corporation, we would not italicize the name.
  • If we are referencing the website, we would italicize the name.

EE cover this at 2.22 and 2.68, among numerous other passages. EE does not explicitly say "do this in the citation and that in the text," because the same logic applies in both places.

Submitted bysguzikon Mon, 06/01/2020 - 10:30

Thank you for confirming this.  I tend to get bogged down in the weeds about little details.