How to denote a piece of art or a person?

Question

If I want to refer to a piece of art, like a painting, sculpture, film, TV series, or a person associated with such a piece of art in an essay then how do I denote it? Do I italicize that part or put that part into double quotes or single quotes?

For example, I want to say that Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan, is the best TV series on this planet. In this case, Breaking Bad is the TV series and Vince Gilligan is the person associated with it. If I want to write this in my essay how do I denote it as a piece of art and a person associated with it, respectively?

Titles of films, TV series, and books are usually italicized, e.g. Breaking Bad. — TimR, May 08 '16 at 16:38
What about the people associated with it? Bryan Cranston, Vince Gilligan and so on? — EdmDroid, May 08 '16 at 16:39
I think, you can encase them in single quoatation marks as well like, 'Breaking Bad' or as @TimRomano said Breaking Bad — Akash Vartak, May 08 '16 at 16:56
This is done in several different ways. My preference would be the briefest and least cluttered, e.g., Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad. — KWinker, May 08 '16 at 19:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 08 '16 at 23:02

Based on a small sample, I have:

For titles of movies, books etc.:

Variety, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News and The New York Times use single quotation marks in article titles, and double quotation marks in the article body.
Salon uses double quotation marks.
The Financial Times uses single quotation marks.
The Guardian, The Telegraph and the BBC use nothing special at all.
The Times and the Observer use single quotation marks in article titles and italics in article bodies.
Time uses italics.
The Independent uses nothing special in the article title and italics in the article body.

(This surprises me, as I thought that italics were a more firm norm.)

Authors etc. are as other names of people.

Seems like there is no such rule then. It's up to me – EdmDroid May 09 '16 at 01:13 — EdmDroid, May 09 '16 at 01:13

How to denote a piece of art or a person?

1 Answers1