Chapter 10 - Italics

Chapter 10
Italics

As silly as it sounds, most readers want to see their letters straight up and down -- and italics slant. That actually makes it difficult to read and is the main reason that we use italics sparingly. The primary purpose of italics is to stress something, to show something out of place, for foreign words and phrases, for certain titles, and for thoughts.

Before getting into the general discussion, I’ll add a couple of general disclaimers.

As with every other facet of writing, it is critical that, if you have a style guide/manual that you use, make sure that you follow it and do things the same every time. You also have to pay attention to the desires of your publisher. Many publishers specify a specific style guide for you to follow and, in the matter of italics, there is an added dimension.

Back in the old days, we typed our manuscripts and typewriters didn’t have italics -- we indicated italics by underlining. With the advances in computers and printers, we can now include italics, but you will occasionally still find a publisher that wants italics indicated by underlining. If you encounter such a case, do not use both italics and underlining.

As always, this chapter is written for American English. In the discussion of thoughts, I’ll break down and include some information about British English as well.

My final disclaimer is to point out that this book is meant for creative writers, not journalists. Most journalists use the “AP Style Guide,” which says you don’t use italics for things like books or plays. If you’re a journalist or if you’re writing for a publication/Web site that uses the AP Style Guide, then make sure you use that publication as your guideline and ignore pretty much everything that follows.

Here’s the table of contents for this chapter.

Punctuation Following Italics

Emphasizing Words in a Sentence

Foreign Words or Phrases

Legal Cases

Letters

Thoughts in Writing

Italics Within Italics

British Usage

Titles

Punctuation Problems with Titles

Scientific Names

Vehicles

Words as Words or Examples

Words Used to Reproduce Sounds

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Punctuation Following Italics

This topic needs to be addressed before we go any further. Make sure you only italicize the names and titles and not the punctuation marks that follow them. Throughout this chapter, I’ll be showing samples of such things, but I want to recap them, quickly, here.

If you’re writing about the movie Who’s Got the Action? the question mark is part of the title and is italicized.

You might ask someone, “Have you ever read Waiting for Godot? I’m looking forward to reading it.” In that case the question mark is not part of the title so it is not italicized.

I’ve always enjoyed Dr. Phibes Rises Again! and I’d italicize the exclamation point because it’s part of the title.

Plurals and possessives are the same. You might say that Gone with the Wind’s cover was very well drawn. In that case, ‘s is not italicized because they’re not part of the title. Similarly, if you ask someone how many copies of the book they have, you’d write, “How many Gone with the Winds do you have?” Again, the s is not italicized.

Emphasizing Words in a Sentence

To understand how such emphasis works, read each of the following aloud, stressing the word that is italicized.

That man is my friend.
That man is my friend.
That man is my friend.
That man is my friend.
That man is my friend.

When you want to stress an individual word or short phrase, use italics.

What you think really doesn’t matter.
Under no circumstances should you plug in the appliance at this point.

If you’re adding emphasis to a quotation, there are several conventions on how to do it. One is that you put the quotation on a separate line and, below it, include the notation as shown below.

" 'Tis the wind, and nothing more."
(emphasis added)

A second thought is that you add the notation at the end of the line.

“ ‘Tis the wind, and nothing more.” (emphasis added)

The third method is to use brackets.

“ ‘Tis the wind, and nothing more.” [emphasis added]

Which is the best? Check your style guide. I prefer the brackets because that lets the reader know that I, as the writer, am interjecting something. Whichever one you choose, keep in mind that the notation is not a sentence and should, probably, not start with a capital nor end with a period.

It is important to remember that if you italicize too many words they lose their impact. Be very sparing with such usage.

Foreign Words or Phrases

This is one more area where style guides disagree frequently. Most agree on the basic premise that a foreign word or phrase should be italicized based on the context of the usage, how familiar your intended audience is with the term, and how often you use the term in your work. Several guides used Merriam-Webster as the standard, saying that if a word has an entry in that dictionary, it need not be italicized. I caution you on adopting that as an always-thing. If you’re putting in a foreign word or term and you feel that your intended audience might not be familiar with it, italicize it even if it is in Merriam-Webster.

About the only thing on which they all agree is that proper nouns should not be italicized. Unless (of course there’s always an exception) you are referring to the proper noun as a word.

In the chapter on abbreviations I pointed out that you shouldn’t use etc. in fiction writing, but if you feel you must, don’t italicize it. If you spell out et cetera, then you italicize it. That holds true for most abbreviations except sic. Nearly every guide says that you should italicize it and include it in square brackets [sic] and the brackets are not italicized.

Armoire, even though it’s a French word, would not be italicized because of its wide usage in English. One site mentioned sotto voce as an example of one of those terms that may or may not be italicized. How do you decide? It depends on your audience and the subject matter of what you’re writing. If you think there is any possibility that your audience will not recognize it as a foreign word/phrase, then italicize it.

Remember the parallel construction thing if you’re using two or three different foreign terms in the same paragraph. If only one of them is relatively unknown and should be italicized, then they all should be italicized.

Most guides agree that, if you’re using a relatively unknown term frequently, you italicize it only the first time it is introduced.

With the fonts available on modern computers it is quite easy to include foreign alphabets. If there is any reason you need to include some word or phrase in the Cyrillic, Arabic, or Greek alphabet, do not italicize it.

Legal Cases

Italicize the names of legal cases.

It was 1987 when the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard held Louisiana’s “creationism act” to be unconstitutional.

Letters

If you mention a single letter as itself, you italicize it.

My wife always signed her checks with D.
My grandmother was always telling me to mind my p’s and q’s.
[Note that the ‘s is not italicized in the last sample.]

As mentioned in the capitalization chapter, if you’re talking about grades, don’t italicize them.

I got an A on my English final and ended up with four A’s and two B’s.

Thoughts in Writing

Most publishers accept thoughts being put in italics.

Hmm, thought Sue, I wonder where Sam got off to?

There are some sites that alter that just a bit.

Sue threw down the towel and thought, What am I doing here?
Sue threw down the towel and thought what am I doing here?

In the first, Sue’s thoughts are treated as dialogue but without the quotes. In the second, there’s no comma and the first word is not capitalized. Once again, we come back to your style guide. I prefer the first one.

Recent writing conventions have been that the point of view determines how you handle thoughts. If you are writing in the first person, you can include thoughts without italics or quotation marks; the character is merely sharing his/her thoughts with the reader. Similarly, if you are using what is called the close or limited third person point of view, you can treat thoughts the same way.

Hmm, I thought, where did I go wrong?
Hmm, Sam thought, where did I go wrong?

I was once asked about extended passages containing thoughts. To have several paragraphs, or pages, of italics would be a workout for the average reader and would probably turn him/her off.

In such a case you need two delimiters: one to indicate the beginning of thought and one to indicate the end of it. One method might be:

Hmm, I thought, where did I go wrong?
Thoughts.
More thoughts.
Final thoughts.
Well, I finally finished my introspection, and maybe that’s what I did wrong.

If you choose that method, you can change I to Jack, Mr. Bury, or whatever name you’re using for your character for the third person viewpoint.

Another, more traditional, method is to treat a long thought-train similar to a flashback -- separate it with some type of break.

For the next twenty minutes Sam ran the various options through his mind.
* * *
Thoughts.
More thoughts.
Final thoughts.
* * *
At the end of that time, he still hadn’t reached any conclusion.

Italics Within Italics

We’ve established before that thoughts are put in italics, but what if there is a word in a thought that would normally be italicized. What then? Easy, you use regular font for it.

Hmm, she thought, this is just like I’m in Stephen King’s Pet Semetary.

British Usage

I’ve edited works from several British writers and they’re back and forth about following American and British usage. Most follow the American usage of double quotes for dialogue.

Sam said, “Blah, blah.”

Some follow the British usage of single quotes.

Sam said, ‘Blah, blah.’

When following that style, quotes within quotes are handled like this.

Sam said, ‘Did Sue say, “Blah, blah”?’

Again, it was a toss-up as to how they handled thoughts. Americans use italics for thoughts, as discussed above, but many Brits use double quotes.

Sam said, ‘Blah, blah,’ and then thought, “What should I do about it?”

Here, I fall back on my disclaimer and say that this chapter is intended for American English and I am just presenting a few different things I’ve seen or heard in the past.

Titles

Books
I read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

Magazines
My favorite magazine, Newsweek, published the article “The Truth of It.”
[Note that the magazine is in italics and the article is in quotes.]

Newspapers
I read the San Bernardino Sun/Telegram regularly.
[Note that the is not in italics.]

Movies
I’m rather partial to the third part, Return of the King.

TV/Radio Programs
PBS has an interesting program called Jerusalem: Center of the World.

Captions
You’ve included a photo in your work and, under it, you put in the caption as shown here.

Titian, Portrait of a Man, long believed to be Ludovico Ariosto.

Paintings
I have a print of Bedard’s Sitting Duck.

Songs/Records
I think Brad Paisley’s “I’m Still a Guy” is great.

I like “Only Heaven Knows” by Foreigner. It’s on their Unusual Heatalbum.
[The album is in italics and the song is in quotes.]

Operas
One of the first English language operas was The Siege of Rhodes by Sir William Davenant in 1656.

Famous Speeches
No, I did not actually hear Lincoln give his Gettysburg Address.

Plays
I absolutely hate Waiting for Godot.

Punctuation Problems with Titles

If a title has an exclamation point at the end as part of the title, it is also italicized.

I really enjoyed Dr. Phibes Rises Again!

If a title has a question mark as part of the title, it is also italicized.

I watched Dean Martin in Who’s Got the Action?

But what if you’re asking a question about one of these? Grammatically, you’re asking a question about a title. That title just happens to end in one of those punctuation marks, so it is grammatically, marginally acceptable to write:

Have you seen Dr. Phibes Rises Again!?
Have you seen Dean Martin in Who’s Got the Action??

However, you’re going to make a bunch of people mad if you do that. One way to make it easier is to ignore the punctuation mark in the title.

Have you seen Dr. Phibes Rises Again?
Have you seen Dean Martin in Who’s Got the Action?

There, you run the risk of irritating the purists who will claim that the punctuation mark is part of the title. Do what you want, but, personally, I’d rewrite the sentences so I didn’t have to deal with it.

I enjoy Dr. Phibes Rises Again! Have you seen it?
Dean Martin is great in Who’s Got the Action? Have you seen it?

If you’re asking a question about a title that does not end in a question mark, the question mark is not italicized.

Have you ever read Waiting for Godot?

If you’re pluralizing a title, do not italicize the s.

If you like that movie, I have two V for Vendettas.

Do not italicize the major religious books such as the Bible or the Koran. Also, do not italicize the individual books of the Bible: Genesis, Mark, or 1 Corinthians.

Scientific Names

One standard is that scientific names are the same worldwide and scientists from every country use the same rules. We have all seen articles/stories that mention the genus and species of some animal or plant. The proper usage in such a case is to capitalize the genus name but not the species -- but both are italicized. For instance, if I’m writing about one of my desert trips and mention that I saw a jackrabbit (Lepus californicus), that’s how I’d write it. If I then went on to refer to a blacktailed jackrabbit from Mexico, I’d then write it as L. alleni. Within the scientific community, it is recognized that the L. refers to the most recent genus I’ve mentioned.

When you get into taxonomy there are many different levels. I’m not going to go into the definitions of each of these, but the Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, and Family are all capitalized, but not italicized. After that comes the Genus, the Species, and Sub-Species. (Note that species is both singular and plural.)

The genus is capitalized, but not the rest of them. All from genus on down are italicized. For instance, you and I are modern humans so we are Homo sapiens sapiens where Homo is the genus, sapiens is the species, and sapiens is the sub-species. If we were talking about some of our ancestors, we might mention H. erectus where the H stands for Homo.

Tired of scientific gunk yet? One last point -- there are some guides that say the genus should be in regular font in creative writing. The problem there is that you might be writing creatively, but one of your readers might be a scientist and, as soon as she sees that, she’ll toss your work aside thinking you’re an idiot. I strongly recommend that you follow the scientific method of naming things.

Vehicles

Major vehicles that have names are italicized unless they are part of a brand name such as Chevy Corvette. In the following examples note that prefaces (such as S.S. or U.S.S) are not italicized.

I had a chance to see the S.S. Savannah once.

My friend served aboard the U.S.S. Constitution.

I have a friend that swears they’ve never found the Titanic.

Have you ever read about the H.M.S. Bounty?
[Note that the question mark is not italicized.]

Trains can be italicized if they have specific names.

When I was a kid, the Santa Fe ran three trains called the Chief, the Super Chief, and El Capitan. Naturally, they were nothing like the old Orient Express.

Words as Words or Examples

If you use a word as an example of a word, but not as a part of the sentence, it is italicized.

You used too many that’s in the last paragraph.
[Note that the word is italicized, but the ‘s is not.]

Most writers use the word which incorrectly and far too frequently.

The difference between defence and defense is merely a spelling thing between British and American English.

Words Used to Reproduce Sounds

Unless you’re in a fantasy world, animals don’t talk; therefore, you cannot include their speech in dialogue. You wouldn’t write that the dog said, “Arf.” You might say that the dog warned you with an arf, or that you heard the squaaaaaawk of the parrot. The alternative is to say that the dog warned you by barking or that the parrot squawked. A hummingbird hums, but you might hear the hmmmmmm of a hummingbird.

I slammed the hammer into my finger with a kathunk! (Actually, I’ve done that a lot and it’s a toss-up whether it’s a kathunk or a kachunk. And I won’t even try to reproduce the next sound you’re going to hear.)

* * *

Once again I’ll mention that this is not meant to be the final word on any of the topics I’ve discussed and, if you have a favorite style guide -- use it!

Good Writing!