Serious writing (in the Latin script) needs italics

[John Cowan]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 6:46 PM Philip Linde <linde.philip at gmail.com> wrote:


> The /italics/ style has the unfortunate side effect of producing false
> positives for quite plausible Unix paths, e.g. /etc/.


Such markup should really only be recognized if there is whitespace or the
beginning of the line before it and whitespace, the end of the line, or
sentence-ending punctuation after it.  One advantage of _ is that it is not
normally used in running text.

This has never
> been a problem in the settings I use this style of implying typography
> (mostly IRC) because the input isn't typically transformed and is
> presented as written


There are IRC clients that interpret it.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 6:52 PM acdw <acdw at acdw.net> wrote:


> However, I think it is a sign of stronger writing if an author is able to
> convey their meaning without resorting to what's essentially metadata in
> their text.  Use syntax, word choice, and punctuation to express your
> intent!


Contexts where that doesn't work, from WP (and yes, I'm being pedantic):

1) Titles of books, movies, magazines, and other stand-alone works.

2) Scientific names of plants and animals.

3) Terms being introduced for the first time.

4) In narrative, the thoughts of a character.

5) Words being used as examples of themselves.  ("The word _the_ is a
definite article.")

6) Names of ships.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
When I'm stuck in something boring where reading would be impossible or
rude, I often set up math problems for myself and solve them as a way
to pass the time.      --John Jenkins
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