Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hi there, I was wondering if we have a policy or practice on how to highlight book titles in book descriptions. E.g., I came across Irish journal, where the description starts off

"In IRISH JOURNAL, Heinrich Böll the celebrated novelist ...".

Another edition, Irish journal, has a description with

"A unique entry in the Böll library, Irish Journal records ...".

Myself, I'm not a huge fan of all caps and would go for italics any time. Unless there's a GR style guide or something stating otherwise, that is.

So does anyone know of a written or unwritten rule for this? Thanks for your answers and comments!

No written rules as far as I know. The unwritten rule is always to avoid overdoing the prettifying. There are some books on GR with descriptions that read like a childrens picture book with every other word in bold or italic or underlined. On a serious book it just looks wrong. I agree with using italics over CAPS. As long as it ends up clearer than it started, I'm happy.

Thanks for your answer, it's very helpful!

I don't think ALLCAPS is ever a goodreads preference for anything (although if there's any minimal ALLCAP text in a book description that comes directly from bookjacket or publisher/author websites, I would not edit out unless the entire description was in ALLCAPS).

Most U.S. style manuals say to use italics for book/magazine/newspaper titles where possible—on goodreads it is possible (and then vary on whether underlining or enclosing in quotation marks is the secondary choice). A short story or article within a book/collection/anthology gets enclosed in quotation marks.