Italic type
In
typography,
italic type refers to cursive typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. The influence from calligraphy can be seen in their usual slight slanting to the right. Different glyph shapes from
roman type are also usually usedâ€"another influence from calligraphy.
Sometimes the term
italic is wrongly applied on
oblique fonts (mostly
sans-serif), when they are merely distorted into a slanted orientation.
Uppercase letters in italic types are usually oblique instead of being true italics.
Swash capitals are uppercase letters that have flourishes added to them, originally designed to go with italic typefaces.
Italic type is often used for
emphasis to distinguish or otherwise set off certain words within text.
An example of
normal and
true italics text:
|
A pangram set in both roman and italic type. |
The same example, as
oblique text:
|
The same pangram as set in artificially slanted roman type. |
*
Emphasis: "Smith wasn't the
only guilty party; it's true."
* The titles of works that stand by themselves, such as books or newspapers: "There was a performance of Beethoven's
Ode to Joy." Works that appear within larger works, such as short stories, poems, or newspaper articles, are not italicized, but merely set off in
quotation marks.
* The names of ships: "The
Queen Mary sailed last night."
* Foreign words: "A splendid
coq au vin was served."
* Using a word as an example of a word, rather than for its semantic content (see
use-mention distinction): "The word
the is an article."
* Introducing terms, especially technical terms or those used in an unusual or different way
["University of Minnesota Style Manual"]: "Freudian psychology is based on the
ego, the
super-ego, and the
id."
* Sometimes in novels to indicate a character's thought process:
"This can't be happening, thought Mary."
* The Latin
binary nomenclature (Genus species), in the
taxonomy of living organisms: "A common rat species is the
Black Rat,
Rattus rattus."
* Symbols for
physical quantities and other
mathematical variables: "The speed of light,
c, is approximately equal to 3.00Ă—10
8 m s
-1."
If something within a run of italics needs to be italicized itself, the type is switched back to non-italicized (
Roman) type:
That sounds like the Ode to Joy
played backwards, thought Mary.
In media where italicization is not possible, alternatives are used as substitutes:
* In
typewritten or
handwritten text,
underlining is typically used.
* In plain-text
computer files, including
e-mail communication, italicized words are often indicated by surrounding them with
slashes or other matched
delimiters. For example:
** I was /really/ annoyed.
** They >completely< forgot me!
** I had _nothing_ to do with it.
The first italic-style typefaces were developed in the
1490s by
Aldus Manutius for the
Aldine Press. Aldus obtained a
patent for the exclusive use of them, although the honor of the invention is more probably due to his typefounder,
Franciso de Bologna. The typeface was not used for emphasis as we do today, but rather for its narrow and compact letterforms, which allowed the printing of pocket-sized books.
In
HTML, the
i element is used to produce italic (or oblique) text. When an author wants to indicate emphasized text, the
em element, often rendered in italics, should be used instead because it is more meaningful to user agents that cannot display italics. If the italics are ornamental rather than semantic, then the
CSS declaration
font-style: italic should be used instead of the
i element.
The
Chicago Manual of Style suggests that to avoid problems such as overlapping and unequally spaced characters,
parentheses and
brackets surrounding text that begins and ends in italic or oblique type should also be italicized. An exception to this rule applies when only one end of the parenthetical is italicized (in which case
roman type is preferred).
