Describe what Italics are meant to mean

[MagisterCultuum]

Originally the use of Italics represented a misunderstanding that led the Italians to think that Carolinian Minuscule was the proper ancient style of writing that Renaissance Italians wanted to recreate.




Italicized : Underlined :: Bold : ALL CAPS

All four methods can be used for emphasis. Bolding is equivalent to all caps and provides more emphasis than italics/underlining, enough to be considered overly forceful or rude. Italics and bolding are more formal and preferred in print. Underlining and all caps are easier to do by hand/discern in handwriting and are thus preferred in handwritten documents. Traditionally writers would give their publisher handwritten drafts in which underlining was used to indicate the portions that should be italicized once in print. I think all caps may also have been how they told their publishers to use a bold font, ut I'm less certain about that.


Italics may also be used to indicate the use of a foreign word, or in block quotes instead of quotation marks.

 

[West 36]

emphasize this

 

[Yeekim]

edit: nevermind

 

[El_Machinae]

They're the type of emphasis that, when speaking, results in a sing-tone to the words.
Bolding would indicate a raised voice, and is thus more aggressive.

 

[RedRalph]

Its pretty indistinct though, isnt it? Its not easy to verbalise what they mean and yet you know what they mean

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, I can give an example with intonation, though that's tough to do with text

 

[Atticus]

Bolding or underlining in normal sentence for emphasis seems aggressive to me.

I think bolding should be used rather for indexing than emphasizing (as Cheezy already said). For example last night I was writing something irl and noticed that I'm talking about several issues there, and it's easier to read if there some sort of structure. However the issues were closely tied together, so I bolded the keywords and rearranged some sentences so that those words would start a paragraph. One paragraph for example started with bolded "In principle", and couple of paragraphs later reads "In practice". Since these weren't consecutive paragraphs I feared that the reader doesn't otherwise notice that these aren't just empty words we use to fill sentences, but important points.

For me written language is in many ways primary, and sometimes I'm annoyed because you can't use italics in speech. The best substitute is to slower your speech and articulate more clearly.

Italics can be also problematic, because if you emphasize too much, it doesn't mean anything anymore. In more formal writing I try to reserve italics to special cases, namely those which may require a pause, or where something important is said that might otherwise escape the reader. There are always things that are very important, but doesn't sound like that if you don't indicate it.

 

[warpus]

Bolding does that too. As does underlining. what is the difference between Italics and those?

Italics make words tilted, whereas bolding something will make the fontface thicker and more noticable.

 

[Sofista]

Originally the use of Italics represented a misunderstanding that led the Italians to think that Carolinian Minuscule was the proper ancient style of writing that Renaissance Italians wanted to recreate.

Um, Italics take their name by the fact that the first creator of such a typeface, Aldo Manuzio, was Italian.