Let's review the uses of italics. In
the past sometimes people used
underlining for the same purpose, but now
italics is much more common. If you are
using handwriting, so let's say you're
writing an exam, then perhaps underlining
would be better, because it's a little
clearer when you're dealing with a
handwritten font, but if we're using
italics, which is the standard, then we
use it in a number of places. And first
of all we use it in titles. So if we
have titles of creative or academic
works, and the key is that if you're
dealing with the work that's longer, that
has more weight to it, or is more
significant, then you tend to use italics,
whereas if the work is shorter then you
use quotation marks. And I'll just give a
couple of examples here, so if you have,
let's say, the the title of an essay
(fairly short) you use quotation marks. And
if you're dealing with a magazine, which
is longer, then you use italics, and often
you'll find that the shorter work can
be included in a longer work. So some
other examples of places where you
would use quotation marks instead would
be things like a short story,
,or a song. Whereas
if these were found let's say on a CD or
in a book, these are longer works and you
would use italics. Same kind of thing for, let's
say, a website, so a website would be in
italics (the title of it), whereas a web
page or a post would be in quotation
marks. And I think you can see the point,
and I won't go through all the examples
here, but when it comes to titles you
just need to determine is this a
significant work? Does it have a lot of
length to it? And then it needs to be
in italics. If not, then we can use
quotation marks. So, let's say you take a
musical composition -- an opera, you know --
that's a significant work [and] you use
italics.
[For] a shorter song [you] use quotation marks. One
thing to note is that this rule
about titles really only applies
to titles of creative and academic works,
so if you're dealing with other, what are
called proper nouns, you really don't
need italics. An example would be
something like Mount Everest or the
Eiffel Tower -- those are titles
of things, but they're just regular
proper nouns. They're not titles of
academic or creative works. One specific
finicky rule to look at here -- this is
with newspaper titles, so newspaper
titles, and if your newspaper title
includes the word "the" (so the Baltimore
Sun) you can actually take it out of
italics. You don't have to include it.
Notice also that if the newspaper title
does not include the name, even though
the location name is often
associated with the title, then don't
italicize it. So in this case London is
not part of the Times title but
Baltimore here is ,and that's the
distinction between the two.
Okay, the next few rules here concern
sacred texts. If we think about sacred
texts (and we're speaking particularly of
the Bible and the Qur'an, then we
typically don't italicize the titles
of those works. So Bible is not
italicized, and the same thing with the
Bible book here (1 Corinthians 13). Often
you'll find [it] is abbreviated by the way.
...
or shortened a bit. But if you see this
then don't use italics. At the same time,
if you're using a particular version of
the Bible, let's say, so the King James
Version, then a version is italicized. The
next rule concerns what we sometimes
refer to as "words as words,"
which is a weird kind of
description, but what we mean by that is
this notion that you're drawing
attention to a particular word. In
this case we've drawn attention to the
word "charity," and also the word "love," and
when we draw attention to a particular
word like that we use italics. You can
also use quotation marks.
You'll see that sometimes.
I would prefer italics, but it's somewhat
up to you, and the main thing is really
just to be consistent in your approach.
Notice that you can also draw attention
to specific letters or numbers, as we've
done here, so the same rule applies, but
be careful, and you'll see here that just
the letter itself is in italics, whereas
the rest of this (the apostrophe and the
s) -- these parts are not. So that's just a
tiny little formatting thing, but be
careful with that. Okay, the next rule
here concerns the titles of what we
might call vehicles, and this includes a
number of things. It includes things
like trains, planes, automobiles, ships,
spacecraft -- so anything like that that
moves. When it has a name attached to it
we tend to italicize it. So here we're
dealing with a barge which has a name
like that, and we italicize it -- the
Floating Frog. You can also use italics
for emphasis, and this is usually not
kosher in academic writing. In popular
writing you can sometimes use [italics for] emphasis,
but even an editor who deals with
creative writing, with fiction, will tell
you that you should really let the words
speak for themselves. Okay, so try to
minimize the use of italics for emphasis.
Then we have words that are foreign
words, but we're using them without a
translation. So we have a foreign
word and when you're using foreign words
then you want to make sure that you ...
put them in italics, unless the
words have become common enough in our
language that you don't need to do so.
And it's remarkable how many words in
the English language are imported from
other languages, so this is often a very
tricky thing. But in this case, if you
write, "Our stay with our Dutch hosts was
very gezellig" -- that's a Dutch word that
means kind of cozy or convivial. Most
people might not be aware of what that
means (unless you're part of a Dutch
community I suppose) and then in that
case, you know, if people are not aware of
it make sure
you use italics. If you look at the last
sentence here --
"He claims he is an autodidact polymath ..."
"Autodidact" means you've taught yourself,
and "polymath" means that you know a lot
of different things. "Poly" means many. Both
of these words come from Greek. Both
of these have Greek roots, but we have
not actually put them in italics because
they are quite old borrowings in English.
The key then with foreign words is
really to determine: are these
standardized? Are they common in English?
Or are they still quite foreign? And that
can be difficult. It can depend on your
audience, but it can also depend on usage,
and in some cases you may just want to
check a dictionary and see if that word
is quite common or not. So those are
the rules for italics and hopefully this
helps you with making sure that your
your writing is properly formatted.