Q. Dear Chicago: I recently wrote a 7,000-word short story. In it, I included a fictional news article about a man who was injured in a train accident. I have two questions regarding how to punctuate it. (1) How is the text of this make-believe article to be set apart from the rest of the story, and (2) should it be italicized?
A. (1) Texts like this are set apart in novels in various ways; usually a book designer decides how to do it. If you’re typing a manuscript to submit to a publisher, set the newspaper article off as a block quotation. (2) Quotations are rarely italicized. Since real newspaper articles aren’t italicized, there’s no reason to make your fictional one italic.