How to Create References When Words in the Title Are Italicized

by Timothy McAdoo

Although the title of a journal article or book chapter is not usually italicized, sometimes words within the title may be italicized. These include book or movie titles, letters or words as linguistic examples, statistics, scientific names for animals, and other items that would be italicized in text, per APA Style guidelines.

Examples

Corballis, M. C., & McLaren, R. (1984). Winding one's Ps and Qs: Mental rotation and mirror-image discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 318–327. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.10.2.318

Foulkes, D. (1994). The interpretation of dreams and the scientific study of dreaming. Dreaming, 4, 82–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0094402

Lai, J., Fidler, F., & Cummings, G. (2015). Subjective p intervals: Researchers underestimate the variability of p values over replication. Methodology, 8, 51–62. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-2241/a000037

Yoder, A. M., Widen, S. C., & Russell, J. A. (2016). The word disgust may refer to more than one emotion. Emotion, 16, 301–308. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000118

If the title of the work is already italicized, as with a reference for a book, report, or dissertation or thesis, then the item that would otherwise be italicized is reverse italicized (meaning that it is in roman type within an otherwise italicized title).

Examples

Blaylock, B. (2015). Coming of age: The narrative of adolescence in David Almond’s Kit’s wilderness and Nick Lake’s In darkness (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 10000726)

Reichenberg, L. (2013). DSM–5 essentials: The savvy clinician’s guide to the changes in criteria. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.