Citing/ Mentioning books in short answers

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>I find that I'm mentioning a lot of books in my short answers for schools. The problem is that when you put it into the box on the Common App website, it removes italics and underlines. Technically, you're only supposed to use quotes when talking about songs, poems, short stories, articles, etc. But when talking about a greater work, it's supposed to be italicized if typed, and underlined if not. Should I just put the title in quotes anyway here? Or should I leave it blank? </p>

<p>So far I'm leaving it blank, but I'm nervous because I don't want any quotation marks to screw up my character count.</p>

2

<p>Have you considered adding the essay as a separate PDF to common app instead of copying/pasting into the essay box :)? Sending the essay as an attachment would allow you to keep all the desired formatting.</p>

<p>If this is for short answers and you have to type into the box, leaving it plain without capitalization/italics should be fine, as they’ll know that it’s a format issue…</p>