Italics, Quotes, and Emphasis (thing)

I never thought it would come to this

...Your Needing My Wisdoms Bad

Ok, I've admitted for five years that I am a nit-picker of style. I refer people to the Everything Style Guide, the Nitpicker's Style Guide, their high school English book, etc.; Some of you still aren't getting it. Creating a hard link out of a title or some other phrase you want to emphasize is a cop-out. That's not markup. What if my browser can't or doesn't underline hyperlinks? What if I'm using a screen reader? Ok, that was a little disingenuous because a screen reader would choke on this write-up, but I digress. If you aren't familiar with how to use good markup in your write-ups please see the links at the end.

I will now present to you a ToasterLeavings style lesson:

• Your Needings to Italic-ize these title:

  (Generalizing: titles of creative works, including...)
  • Titles of books - The Red Badge of Courage (Note that you don't Italicate the names of Holy Books or Writings or the books, chapters, or verses therein. They have names. Just to be naming them with properly capitalized. It's not The Bible because it is the Bible, see?)
  • TV Shows, Radio Shows - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, All Things Considered
  • Movies and Stage Performances (Musicals, Plays) - Hackers, Snatch, Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet (note that some of these are BOTH, omg!)
  • Newspapers - Florida Times-Union, The Fish Wrap
  • Magazines and Journals - 3-2-1 Contact, Nature (Again I fooled you by using names that are both TV shows and periodicals. They are still titles of creative works so your treating them muchly the same.)
  • Musical Compositions and Compilations (this includes albums of songs regardless of medium, but not individual songs, sections, subdivisions or generic terms as White-wig's Symphony no. 8 in E minor. For example: italicize titles of songbooks, piano rolls, LPs, CDs; Quote their individual song titles or movements.) - Quality Control, 69 Love Songs, anything by Mozart with names instead of numbers like Le Nozze di Figaro or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

  (Diana Hacker's The Bedford Handbook, Sixth Edition also includes these creative works...)

  • Pamphlets - Why You Made Jesus Cry and Are Going to Hell
  • Long/Epic poems - The Rhymes of the Ancient Seattle Mariners!!
  • Choreographic Works - The Nutcracker
  • Works of Visual Art - Starry Night, Michelangelo's David
  • Comic Strips - Sin Fest, Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes
  • Web Sites - Slashdot, Slate but not addresses slashdot.org, slate.com
  • Software - Microsoft Word, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein

• Your Needings to italic these name:

  • Planes and other aircrafts - The Spirit of St. Louis
  • Trains - the Mallard (Not phrasing like A Train or Orient Express. Those are the proper names of lines and not locomotives. No specialized treatments.)
  • Automobiles - The Hotwad, Bigfoot
  • Ships
    • Spacefaring - Space Cruiser Yamato
    • Starfaring - Starship Enterprise (notice that you don't italicize the antecedent part)
    • Transdimensionalizing (Like in that first-half-good, last-half-the-suck Event Horizon.)
    • Seafaring - USS Enterprise, USS Cole
    • Sandfaring - see also: Dune, Xenogears, Trigun

• Your Needing to italicize thesis word in English sentence:

  foriegn words when mentioned as foreign words like...
  • Latin: modus operandi (Its meaning how I ROLL. Word up.)
  • Japanese: kanji
  • French: c'est la vie
  • British: bangers and mash. Ok I joked that one for your peoples with my mad CRAZY funny skills on you all!

• Finalizing. Your Needing to Italicate these too:

  • Letters mentioned as letters (When I was playing some Scrabble or Literati kinda game with my sister I was like no way that quixotic doesn't have two Ks in it. I then was proceded to smack her deftly in the face because I hate that game now for sure.)
  • Words mentioned as words (I was afraid that my mother gave me too many thank yous. Notice that I didn't use an apostrophe in that sentence. Apostrophes to show the plurality of mentioned words is passé. I just italicized passé because it's a foreign word used in an English sentence. Recognize! that your don't have to italicate foreign word if they are sufficiently assimilated.)
  • Numbers mentioned as numbers (I hate the number 1 because 1 is the loneliest number.)
  • I would argue Nodes mentioned as nodes (While I was reading Somenoder's Rant on Style I started to reevaluate my improper use of hard-links as markup.)

• And now lastly Your putting these in quotation markers:

  • Titles of episodes of TV programs - "The One Where Rachel Finds Out", "The Emissary"
  • Newspaper and Magazine articles (In "Letters to the Editor" you stated that my father was uncircumcisioned but that's completingly wrong. How would you know about the circumstration status of my pops anyways?!)
  • Poems - "The Raven" (Nevermore, nevermore. I'm down til the Earthly world core that I told you about before! Take that Mr. Smarty-Poet noder. I GOTS rhymes for many months and still more than some people.)
  • Short stories - "I, Robot"
  • Songs - "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", "Sex On Wheels"
  • Chapters and Subdivisions in a book (The word no is the contents of "Chapter 20. Did the Tone Change" in Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Please notice again that I have emphasized the word no in the last sentence: remember how I said 'words mentioned as words'. U EMPHASIZIN': GOOD.)

I'm hoping this had helped you to better user of emphasis in your Nodings. I don't drop these wisdoms lightly for you all be needing them BAD. I don't choose to wanting to have to massage all you people reapeatingly because it's getting to be worse than getting IN CHECK by Busta Rhymes, whoo haa!

See also: Gritchka's style guide, Everything Style Guide, The Nitpicker's Guide to E2 Style and Formatting, E2 HTML tags : Chapter 2

Special thanks to fellow nit-pickers that nitpicked me: Albert Herring, Mauler, Lj and others.