Mobile app version of vmapp.org
Login or Join
Debbie163

: How to "italicize" a word in an italic context? If you want to emphasize a word in a roman text, but don't want the effect last long in the readers, you make it italic. In an already italic

@Debbie163

Posted in: #Typography

If you want to emphasize a word in a roman text, but don't want the effect last long in the readers, you make it italic.

In an already italic paragraph, how do you make the same emphatic effect to italic?

Some considerations:


Bold italic: too heavy due to its boldness
Roman: I find a roman text inside an italic sentence is harder to notice and doesn't convey the same psychological effect as an italic text inside a roman sentence. I don't have much knowledge on psychology, so any help with the psychology on typography is much appreciated.


Currently my choice is to put it in between *two asterisks* , as suggested in Emphasis (typography) - Wikipedia. The paragraphs are italicized and indented to indicate that they're examples for the main points.

Here are when each type of emphasis fits, in my experience:


Bold: introducing definitions, making comparisons
Italic: nuances emphasis
Underline: sentence breakdown
Quote: wording choice

10.02% popularity Vote Up Vote Down


Login to follow query

More posts by @Debbie163

2 Comments

Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best

 

@Michele215

My current choice is to use a different font on the word. I can't explain this, but I find roman in italic or bold italic don't convey they same psychological effect as how italic in roman does. How to know which typeface should be used, given a contextual typeface?

An alternative choice is suggested in Emphasis (typography) - Wikipedia:


In Internet usage, asterisks are sometimes used for emphasis (as in "That was *really* bad").


I think it's not conventional (since it's an "internet usage"), so it might depend on how the readers familiar with this.

10% popularity Vote Up Vote Down


 

@Speyer780

Don't underline in print. Underlining is a manuscript convention to tell the future typesetter "italicize this." On the web it means a link.

To your main point: when you have a chunk of copy which is italicized, and you need to emphasize one word, the general technique in fiction is to make it roman (non-italic), because that's the "opposite" of italic.

In non-fiction, I might make it bold italic, because your italics have a meaning on top of formatting emphasis.

[I'm trying to create examples and our board CSS is resisting my formatting for some reason.]

10% popularity Vote Up Vote Down


Back to top | Use Dark Theme