What is the correct way to present a living organisms scientific name and why?

I kinda already know how to present a living organisms scientific name, you put it in italics right? but i don't know why so please could you help its for an assignment tnx :) xx

What is the correct way to present a living organisms scientific name and why?
For presenting a scientific name these are the following rules:


1.The name of the genus(first word) begins with a capital letter.


2.The name of the species(the last word) begins with a small letter.


3. When Printed scientific name is written in italics.


4. When written by hand the genus name and the species name have to be underlined separately.
Reply:Hemia's answer is quite correct but for a scientific paper you may need to go a little further. Take this example;





Eranthis hyemalis (L.) Salisbury (The Winter Aconite)





Eranthis (the genus) gets a capital letter; hyemalis (the specific name) gets a lower case letter; the (L.) stands for the person who first named it (in this case Linnaeus); finally it was renamed by Salisbury, as he didn't agree with Linnaeus' opinion. Annoyingly, although this follows the accepted rules rules for botany, for zoology the rules are a little different, but not greatly so.