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Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

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#2

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

I know. It's a really annoying thing. My teacher made us write a short scene, and said because someone was speaking, it had to be in quotes. It annoyed the heck out of me...but I got away with it, thank goodness.
What the puck?!
#3

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

Should they be italicized, then? Or underlined? This is really eeire. I was just about to post a message (about "The Fantasticks") and I stopped and went back and put quotes around the title before posting it, and when I went back to the board I saw this message!
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
#4

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

It was beaten into our heads in school, too. :)

You can put these titles in Italics, Bold Print, Underlined or All Caps (and on BWW, I often just leave it as: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? if I don't feel like capitalizing)

Only songs, chapters, individual poems, newspaper and magazine articles, etc are put in quotes.

The film industry is bad bad bad---they put movie titles in quotes on posters!! Ugh! :)

johnraymondbarker.com

Updated On: 8/27/05 at 01:46 PM

#5

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

I had no idea this was such a bone of contention.
Nothing precious, plain to see, don't make a fuss over me. Not loud, not soft, but somewhere inbetween. Say sorry, just let it be the word you mean.
#8

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

OH DIDN'T THINK I WOULD DO IT WOULD YOU? WELL TAKE THIS!

"The Last Five Years"
"Parade"
"Urban Cowboy"
"Songs for a New World"
BSoBW2: I punched Sondheim in the face after I saw Wicked and said, "Why couldn't you write like that!?"
#9

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

I know that technically they're not supposed to be put in quotes, but I still put show titles in quotations on the web because the message is easier to read, IMO, if the show title, etc. is sort of seperated from the rest of the text with quotations.

So, I MAKE MY OWN RULES!
"You just can't win. Ever. Look at the bright side, at least you are not stuck in First Wives Club: The Musical. That would really suck. " --Sueleen Gay
#12

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

And, just for the record:

Your is possessive
You're means "you are."

And an apostrophe only need follow or precede an "S" if you are making the word possessive (barring certain words like "hers" and "theirs". You don't use one when making a word plural.

Example:

That is Scott's. (Correct)

These taco's taste good. (Incorrect)




"How do you like THAT 'misanthropic panache,' Mr. Goldstone?" - PalJoey
#13

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

One must use quotation marks sometimes. I write for a newspaper whose primary mode of distribution is email, and it limits our formatting options a bit. Currently, we use quotation marks since there isn't really any other option except _Title_, which just looks stupid. We can't expand formatting until more of our 2000 subscribers read our HTML version, and they're slow to adapt.

I get confused when punctuating Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Is that right?
"WHEN is the winter of our discontent?" "NOW is the winter of our discontent!" Visit My Blog
#16

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

Liz_Bennet, you wouldn't need the period if the sentence ends with the title. The question mark will serve as the ending punctuation for the sentence.
"How do you like THAT 'misanthropic panache,' Mr. Goldstone?" - PalJoey
#20

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

As the rebellious being that I am I will now continually type out all titles in quotes:

"Wicked"
"Rent"
"West Side Story"

and just to piss people off even more, I'll take it a step further. i'll start calling every and all cast recordings soundtracks.

if you'll excuse me now i'm off to listen to my "sweeney todd" soundtrack.
#23

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

These MLA rules technically only apply to professional and academic writing. It is a standardized guide so that professionally published articles and papers are uniform and coherent. Technically, it isn't incorrect when you are chatting online or scribbling notes. If someone who worked at the MLA went to work for Harvard's Blubook publisher (the legal equivalent of the MLA handbook) they'd run screaming from the building.
#24

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

I know (trust me, I have a degree in English), but it's such a pain in the ass to do that italicizing thing on this board, and doing titles in all caps makes it seem like you're screaming it.
#25

re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

But this is not chatting. This is posting messages on a board. Speed is not a priority and it takes less than 15 seconds to proof read a couple of lines. aight? re: Plays, Musicals, Books, and Films are NOT put in quotes!

Updated On: 8/27/05 at 09:51 PM

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