Italics Will Be the Death of Me

[woodwardiocom]

-Most of us have mastered when to write something in italics. Titles of books, foreign words that haven't been absorbed, emphasis, etc. The thing that's bugging me has to do with italicized words followed by punctuation.

-When do the italics "leak" onto the punctuation? My library of style guides are mostly mute on the topic, except by example. An italic word followed by a vertical exclamation point looks silly to me, and Gordon's New Well-Tempered Sentence apparently agrees, as it includes a case where the exclamation point gets slanty. However, Oxford English Grammar does it the other way. Colons almost always take the italics, and for periods it seems irrelevant (except in fancy-shmancy typefaces where the period isn't round).

-Strunk and White says nothing on the subject. (And "Strunk and White" itself doesn't take italics because those are the authors, not the title.) The UPI Stylebook has no frickin' index, so I don't know if it says anything. The Chicago Manual of Style . . . hey, Chicago actually has an opinion! (Gods bless, Jen/anotherjen, for giving me your old copy!) "Generally, punctutation marks are printed in the same style . . . as the word . . . immediately preceding them."

(And, even better, my publisher's style guide, though not explicit on the topic, contains numerous examples that agree with Chicago. Lo, I am saved.)

(Uh-oh, that above hyperlink just made me think of a problem. If I'm linking the title of a book in HTML, the italic tags go inside the link tags, since the italics are part of the title. But, a following comma is not part of the link, but does get italicized. The purest solution would be to italicize the title inside the link tags, and then separately italicize the comma . . . )

(Yes, I'm insane.)

Comments

[hackard.livejournal.com]

If it's not explicit on the topic, it should be. People Will Be Beaten.

(And you can always italicize first, then link, and then unlink, comma, unitalicize. But that's probably bad HTML or something.)

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

If it's not explicit on the topic, it should be.

-I can't decide if it's a comfort that one of my editors reads my LJ. In this case, I think it's good...

(And you can always italicize first, then link, and then unlink, comma, unitalicize. But that's probably bad HTML or something.)

-While that would be visually identical, part of my mind doesn't want to distance the italics from the title like that. Bad HTML would be "link, italicize, unlink, unitalicize", though that would also render exactly the same way.

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

What? You didn't see what MLA style and APA style had to say? *shocked* ;) -H...

[donnad.livejournal.com]

The only thing my MLA book mentions about italicizing punctuation is that the punctuation must be easily recognizable. It does specifically say that "in general, underline foreign words used in an English text."

My other book which I rely on more that my Strunk & White or MLA book, called Steps to Writing Well doesn't mention italics, but rather double quotes and that almost all punctuation goes inside the quotes except a comma or semi-colon, so I would assume that you italicize the punctuation too.

[freyja.livejournal.com]

are strunk and white two separate people or a company?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Two people, William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.

[freyja.livejournal.com]

then shouldn't you be saying "strunk and white SAY" rather than "says?"

/nitpick

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

"Strunk and White" is a common name for the book actually titled The Elements of Style. Thus, I'm referring to a book (singular), not two people (plural).

-The practice of referring to textbooks and the like by their authors is fairly common, since books on the same topic often have very similar titles -- e.g., Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life and Biology: Life on Earth might be called "Taggart" and "Audesirk". "Turn to chapter 5 in Taggart," etc.

(Your way isn't wrong, I should say, but it kinda implies I'm on speaking terms with two long-dead grammarians.)

[freyja.livejournal.com]

(And "Strunk and White" itself doesn't take italics because those are the authors, not the title.)

see, i took this to mean that you were referring to the authors (people), not the title (book).

The practice of referring to textbooks and the like by their authors is fairly common

i have heard people use it like that in class, but i really just assumed they were lazy. i mean, there's lots of "shortcuts" out there that aren't strictly accurate, grammatically speaking. is it actually correct usage, then?

(Your way isn't wrong, I should say, but it kinda implies I'm on speaking terms with two long-dead grammarians.)

not really; lit review does it all the time. i never assumed they dug up jane austen and got her to repeat what she said in sense and sensibility.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

see, i took this to mean that you were referring to the authors (people), not the title (book).

-You have a point there.

is it actually correct usage, then?

-It's synecdoche. [checks dictionary] Nope, my mistake, it's metonymy. ("Synecdoche" is using the whole for the part, or the part for the whole, such as using "sail" when you mean "ship". "Metonymy" is using something closely associated, as using "crown" to mean "king".)

synecdoche and metonymy

[freyja.livejournal.com]

yeah-- i... don't understand this. why would anyone do something like that? wouldn't that confuse most of the people they were talking to?

Re: synecdoche and metonymy

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-People do it all the time. When you refer to someone as a "helping hand", you don't really mean they're a big ol' bodiless hand. When people say "The White House had no comment", they don't mean the building was strangely silent. When I say "the silver screen", I usually mean "the movies", not the actual piece of fabric at the local theater.

but...but...

[freyja.livejournal.com]

-i've never heard a person referred to as "helping hand." i've heard "so-and-so LENT a helping hand" or somesuch.

-"The White House" thing-- I always took that to mean that one was referring to the INSTITUTION rather than the actual people inside. Like the Rotary Club, or the Senate, or the PTA, or what-have-you.

-i've always heard it as "ON the silver screen," never just "let's go to the silver screen" or "what does the silver screen have for us today?"