Titles
Titles of complete works (books, movies, albums, etc.) should be either underlined (a tradition from pre-ubiquitous-computer days) or italicized. Titles of short works (essays, songs, etc.) should be kept in quotation marks.
This practice can actually prevent a lot of confusion, and I wish there were some way to hit the ‘italicize’ button in speech. Currently, I am teaching Beowulf in literature. Sometimes when I say ‘Beowulf’ I mean the book as a whole and sometimes I mean the main character. Perhaps I need to adapt a handstroke that means ‘underlined’ when I speak of the book.
Also, I wish it were easier to make the distintion in emails, as well. Handbooks suggest enclosing a title of a complete work in underscores (i.e. _Beowulf_); however, in my opinion that is not aesthetically pleasing. Should I compromise and set off even a book or movie title in quotation marks? Is a deliberate error better than a deliberate omission? It pricks my conscience to make the omission, it pricks my nerves to choose an error, it pricks my eyes use the suggested solution, it pricks my husband to use html — what am I to do?
In my opinion, it depends on the formality of the e-mail. If it’s just quick, informal chit chat between friends, it really doesn’t matter, and quotes might actually make more sense to the person receiving it than the technically correct manner. If it’s an e-mail to a professor, manager, or some other semi-formal message, than I’ll often try to use the more “correct” method, even if that means underlines before and after the title. (Which looks crumby, but does the job).
Of course, since most e-mail is so informal that people will deliberately misspell their own words (e.g. “Thanx 4 da pics!”), I wouldn’t worry about it too much. ;-)