Readers of this blog will notice an essential difference between Daniel’s writing style and mine. I’m not talking about the profound ones: It is self-evident that Daniel is a quick-witted, cynical Hollywood insider, and I’m the droll, semi-academic media observer with a thing for animated chicks. No- I’m talking about title showings.

According to the style manuals a film is a singular work, and should be shown as distinct in text. Daniel uses all caps to delineate movie titles (SHOWGIRLS). I use italics (The Waterboy). Both are correct.

Dan’s convention comes from both the earlier Internet (where italics weren’t an option) and college composition, again to indicate titles absent any other typographical method.

I got my style from college as well. When I was a-studenting the “little red schoolbook” of film theory was “A History of Narrative Film” by David A. Cook. This thick, floppy softbound text was colloquially called the “Cook Book” and was required for a number of film courses, from history overviews to genre-studies classes to screenwriting. In it, all film titles were italicized, and any student with a word processor was encouraged to follow “Cook Book” style.

As I said, both conventions are correct, but they read a bit differently on a gut level. In the default font and type size used in TPN:: Box Office Weekly, all caps look a bit like YELLING, and italics look a bit like whispering.

Just to make matters more complicated, the New York Times and Variety both distinguish film titles with quotation marks (”Saw IV”). As they are publications of record, this is also correct.

Television citations are a little more problematic. Series names are supposed to be in quotation marks (”Police Squad!”), but they are often shown in italics. Dan does his in ALL CAPS, to be consistent. Individual episodes are considered “dependent or abbreviated works” and, like short films, are always supposed to be in quotation marks (”Rendezvous With Death”).

This has been a public service of Box Office Weekly, where stile rains supreem & good grammers is never worng grammers.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 7:17 am and is filed under General, Hosts, Podcasting, Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.