Non-threaded

Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Find proofreaders here, useful resources, and share opinions and advice on story crafting.

Grammar: Titles within dialogue

5 years ago
Let's say a character says he works for a particular company in a conversation. Do we need to use single quotes or italics for the title, or can we just capitalize the main words like any other title?

For example, say a character says this: "Hi. I work at Bill's Towing and Fine Prostitution Services." Should the business title be italicized or in single quotes? Or is it fine written like that? Thanks to the helpful Grammar Nazis!

Grammar: Titles within dialogue

5 years ago
I don't think it really matters as long as it's fairly normal and, most importantly, consistent; grammar has always had leeway in that sense. Personally, if I'm doing titles in dialogue I tend to do single quotations and italicised.

"Hi. I work at 'Bill's Towing and Fine Prostitution Services'." Maybe that looks weird to some people.

More importantly, Bill runs a business for towing and prostitution? That's quite a niche business model- do the prostitutes do the towing?

Grammar: Titles within dialogue

5 years ago
No. Basically if you pay for the premium service you get to ride in your car with the prostitutes while it's towed, and they, well, let's just say passersby won't see them due to the particular location of their heads.