CAPITALIZE (NOTE: The list below includes, but is not limited to, proper nouns that should be capitalized; when in doubt, consult a dictionary.)

• Words in a title except articles, prepositions, and conjunctions
• Professional titles preceding or following names
• Titles with rank
• Specific departments
• Geographical areas
• Names of businesses and institutions
• Languages
• Courses followed by a number
• Religions, churches, denominations
• Organizations
• Historical events, periods
• Races, nationalities
• Calendar names and events
• Personal names and nicknames
• Ships, trains, planes
• Abbreviations: acronyms and initialisms

ITALICIZE/UNDERLINE

Longer works: Books, novels, plays, movies, newspapers, magazines, paintings, sculptures, ships, trains, TV programs

USE QUOTATION MARKS FOR

Shorter works: TV episodes, short stories, songs, poems, chapters in a book, essays, speeches Direct quotations (Place periods and commas inside closing quotation marks; semicolons and colons, outside; question marks and exclamation marks are placed according to whether the mark accompanies the sentence or the quotation.)

HYPHENATE

• Words with a fixed hyphen (use a dictionary)
• Compound modifiers preceding a noun: a three-hour movie
• Words beginning with the prefixes self-, all-, and well-
• Prefixes before a proper noun: all-American
• fractions used as modifiers: one-third voter turnout
• numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine
• multiword adjectives: out-of-state checks
• some compound nouns: mother-in-law