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jackI'm fairly sure I use bold, italic and *starred* in subtly different ways. I'm often fascinated by such subtle distinctions, such as the subtleties in translating into one of two related words.
The thing is, I can't put my finger on what the differences might be. (The nearest I've come is in observed starring can star two consecutive words separately, or as part of a phrase, which is occasionally useful.) Does anyone recognise a difference in themselves?
I was reminded of this by the idea in html that you have a semantic tag, eg. em for emphasis, and a mapping from that to display, where the mapping could be overridden. Which is definitely the right way, but not yet universal. And part of the reason I'm slow in adopting is that having acquired subtle differences, I don't like losing them, even if it would make sense. After all, if I can't explain them, I can't persuade anyone to make a tag for them :)
A tag for citation, a common usage of italic, makes sense, as often that is represented in a specific way on different web-pages, or in different ways in a piece of text, (eg. in theory, nested cite tags might helpfully do different things). And I can certainly live with only one form of textual emphasis, I use none at all in formal writing. But I don't like to :) And I have a nagging feeling that if I write em, then someone who hasn't configured their web browser might see it as bold[1], and think I was shouting, whereas I'd only meant italic, and it's quite different :)
[1] That is a difference, that bold stands out of the page a lot more, whereas italic doesn't. So both serve some function. I am confused with google chat because it renders starred text as bold, and I use stars both for actions (*hug*) which should be bold and emphasis (I *did* say that) which shouldn't, at least in my writing :)
The thing is, I can't put my finger on what the differences might be. (The nearest I've come is in observed starring can star two consecutive words separately, or as part of a phrase, which is occasionally useful.) Does anyone recognise a difference in themselves?
I was reminded of this by the idea in html that you have a semantic tag, eg. em for emphasis, and a mapping from that to display, where the mapping could be overridden. Which is definitely the right way, but not yet universal. And part of the reason I'm slow in adopting is that having acquired subtle differences, I don't like losing them, even if it would make sense. After all, if I can't explain them, I can't persuade anyone to make a tag for them :)
A tag for citation, a common usage of italic, makes sense, as often that is represented in a specific way on different web-pages, or in different ways in a piece of text, (eg. in theory, nested cite tags might helpfully do different things). And I can certainly live with only one form of textual emphasis, I use none at all in formal writing. But I don't like to :) And I have a nagging feeling that if I write em, then someone who hasn't configured their web browser might see it as bold[1], and think I was shouting, whereas I'd only meant italic, and it's quite different :)
[1] That is a difference, that bold stands out of the page a lot more, whereas italic doesn't. So both serve some function. I am confused with google chat because it renders starred text as bold, and I use stars both for actions (*hug*) which should be bold and emphasis (I *did* say that) which shouldn't, at least in my writing :)
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Date: 2008-02-22 12:25 pm (UTC)- bold is to make sure something isn't missed or is marked as important
- italics are for a) inner thoughts of a character (as opposed to speech), b) sarcasm, c) something similar to scare quotes, d) quoting online, e) sometimes quoting in a foreign language, f) very occasionally to make sure different bodies of text are differentiated.
- stars are for a) representing italics in emails (or anywhere you can't or can't be bothered to make something italic) but only really for b and c above, b) to put emphasis on something (when opposed with italics, i.e. when you do have access to e.g. HTML, or c) representing an action (e.g. *smiles*).
I think that covers it :)