How to quote titles in dialogue and narration?

Most grammar handbooks have a guide for italics. My Harbrace Handbook says to italicize the titles of books, magazines, newspapers, plays, films, works of art, long poems, foreign words, the names of bridges, ships, trains, and aircraft. It adds to use italics sparingly to emphasize words.

Quote marks are used around titles of short stories, articles, short poems, and the like.

I'm with Chase.

Dialogue and quotation punctuation rules are crazy enough to lead one to pulling his or her hair out while texting on a cell phone and driving all the same time completely ignoring the cop car behind you trying to pull you over for distracted driving.

This is also not the first time in my short period of being on this board that I've seen a question about dialogue and quotation marks. And to make matters worse, the dialogue rules and regulations have really changed. I'm highly debating putting together a complete dialogue and quotation guide...

Anyway...on to your question!

Mark Moore said:

<SNIP>How should I go about quoting titles in dialogue and narration? Are there different rules for movie, TV, book, song, album, and video game titles? I've always used quotes, because using italics for anything other than thoughts or stress seems weird to me.

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Let's begin with the second half of your question, how to quote titles in plain old narration.

Straight from the Owl at Purdue http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resources/577/04/

Owl at Purdue said:

Use quotation marks for the following:

• Titles of short or minor works
• Songs
• Short Stories
• Essays
• Short Poems
• One Act Plays
• Other literary works shorter than a three act play or complete book
• Titles of sections from longer works
• Chapters in books
• Articles in newspapers, magazines, or journals
• Episodes of television and radio series.

Underlining or italics are used for the titles of long pieces or works that contain smaller sections.

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Now, what happens when you want to put one of those things inside quotation marks already?

Use single quotes. For example:

"The James Thurber story 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' is a funny story," he said.

I'd be careful with the 'underline' advice, Ses. Some publishers don't like it. I think that's the problem with style sheets that are tailored toward whole registers of writing (academic, news etc). If anyone is thinking of doing a guide, contacting a few publishers and getting feel for what they like would be a good start.

Well, see, Fallen, that is why I said the rules have changed so much--are changing.

Owl at Purdue is pretty good for the basic stuff. But again, you get into stylistic issues with fiction as well, and the underline format is a hold over from typewriters not having the capability of italics.

Mark Moore said:

So movies, novels, and albums would be considered "long pieces"?

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Yes, titles of those works are italicized.

Mark Moore said:

And am I understanding correctly that ALL titles within quoted dialogue use small quotes?

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Let me sidestep your specific question and answer another way: With tiny exceptions in other than fiction, the only use for single quotation marks for US publications is quotes within quotes:

"Did you read 'The Horror of Quoting' in The New Yorker?" she asked?