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In forums such as this, where it's not possible to format the title of a question, is there an appropriate way to refer to a title of a book? For example, in this question I enclose the title of a textbook in quotes. Is that okay?

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I'm not too familiar with the tag options here, so re-tagging will be appreciated. – Quinn Culver Dec 8 '11 at 0:17
Insider's tip: avoid referring to any Stack Exchange site as a 'forum', some people are known to get twitchy :) – Benjol Dec 8 '11 at 8:08

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Yes. For example, a typeset Chicago Manual citation:

Surname, Given. Title. City: Publisher, 2011.

can be represented in plain text as:

Surname, Given. "Title." City: Publisher, 2011.

AP style allows underline (for historical reasons, because it is available on a manual typewriter). As StackExchange markdown does not support underline, I do not give an example.

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Thanks. Can't you just use HTML here on StackExchange to underline text? – Quinn Culver Dec 8 '11 at 0:24
Quinn, neither html encoding, nor the ** method work in the question title. Only in the body. – Skip Huffman Dec 8 '11 at 4:34
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@SkipHuffman, some confusion here. MetaEd refers to StackExchange markdown in his answer, which doesn't apply to titles (as you say), but Quinn has a point - you can use HTML in the body. – Benjol Dec 8 '11 at 8:06
If there is markdown for underline which works in the body I would love to know about it. The HTML U element is ignored. – MετάEd Dec 8 '11 at 17:12
You are right @MetaEd underscore is not one of the basic formatting tools provided. – Skip Huffman Dec 8 '11 at 17:23

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