Serious writing (in the Latin script) needs italics

[Case Duckworth]

On 11/9/20 6:59 PM, Sean Conner wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great John Cowan once stated:
>>
>> 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.
> 
> 7) Foreign words
> 
> 8) Direct thoughts---example: _Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I must
>     know before I go there?_ he wondered.
> 
>    -spc (The example is from Dune, of which about a third is the direct
> 	thoughts of the characters ... )
> 

Fair enough on all this --- but you know what's funny?  I can tell where 
the thoughts begin and end by the use of the formatting characters _ or 
*... and the same goes for titles of other works.  Foreign words can go 
in "'" or "*" as well, and scientific names of plants & animals are 
usually just two words, so no need.  Plus they're usually foreign 
(unless you're writing Latin) so why does it matter?  Maybe we should 
trust our readers to be smart.

AND if you really want to get into  it, italics is a little over-used, 
wouldn't you say?  We have 8 things already listed that it's for, most 
of which are barely related --- that seems like a pretty poor use of 
formatting if you ask me.  With plain text, we can use different 
characters for different things:

1) Titles of books, movies, magazines, and other stand-alone works: THE 
GREAT GATSBY.

2) Scientific names of plants and animals: Homo erectus, or `Homo 
erectus` (like verbatim)

3) Terms being introduced for the first time: 'Single quotes' are those 
which stand out enough from regular things that they're fairly obvious.

4) In narrative, the thoughts of a character: see 8

5) Words being used as examples of themselves.  ("The word _the_ is a
  definite article.") -- You could use _ here, or if you don't want 
overlap with thoughts, use *, or use ^, or use "

6) Names of ships -- (a) how often is this a thing? (b) just capitalize 
-- it's just a name. Same goes for books. Or hell, capitalize: THE DAWN 
TREADER.

7) Foreign words -- see 5, or even 2.

8) Direct thoughts---example: _Is a gom jabbar something of Arrakis I 
must know before I go there?_ he wondered. -- or put it in quotes, or 
set it off with dashes -- he thought.

What I'm saying is, I don't think emphasis markers are needed in Gemini. 
  It's pretty clear what the author is saying, and extra formatting 
isn't necessary.

~ Case