Q. I would like to know if boat names (smaller vessels, not big ships) should be italicized in fiction. I am editing a middle-grade novel that includes mention of a lot of boat names, and the italics feel wrong in the dialogue. Is there a case for italicizing the names in the narrative but not in dialogue?
A. If Victor Hugo can decide against applying italics to the name of a large vessel, you can do it for smaller ones. In Les Travailleurs de la mer, published in Paris in 1866 and in London that same year (as Toilers of the Sea, an English translation by W. Moy Thomas), the narrator explains that, “in spite of typographical usage,” references to the steamship Durande won’t be italicized (or souligner in French):
Having created his steamboat, Lethierry had christened it; he had called it Durande—‘La Durande.’ We will speak of her henceforth by no other name; we will claim the liberty also, in spite of typographical usage, of not italicizing this name Durande; conforming in this to the notion of Mess Lethierry, in whose eyes La Durande was almost a living person. (English ed., 1:132)
Après avoir créé ce bateau à vapeur, Lethierry l’avait baptisé. Il l’avait nommé Durande. La Durande, — nous ne l’appellerons plus autrement. On nous permettra également, quel que soit l’usage typographique, de ne point souligner ce nom Durande, nous conformant en cela à la pensée de mess Lethierry pour qui la Durande était une personne. (French ed., 1:136)
Note that the French edition uses italics to refer to the name Durande (“ce nom Durande”) but not to that name when it’s used for the ship (“la Durande”); the English translation doesn’t apply italics in either case. In the latest Chicago style, italics would be applied to “the word Durande”—and to “the Durande” as a ship—but not when referring to “the name Durande” (see CMOS 7.66 and 8.117).
So if it seems fussy or artificial or otherwise wrong to use italics for the names of the smaller boats mentioned in the dialogue of your book, you can take a page from Victor Hugo and go without them (assuming your author agrees). But if you do that, you might consider removing italics for boat names in the narrative also. Assuming you’d apply italics to the title of a book or the like whether it occurs in narration or dialogue, it’s probably best to be equally consistent for other categories. Even your middle-grade readers are likely to appreciate that.
For the capital T in Travailleurs (an alternative to strict sentence case for French titles), see CMOS 11.30.