Use of italics.

February 15, 2019 4:25 PM

I have a basic understanding of when to use italics and quotation marks. But I haven't found anything that says if they need to be used beyond the first reference. It seems they would wear a reader out if they're used continuously for repeating proper nouns that have already employed them once. Are they used at each instance or only at the first and are unnecessary for subsequent ones?
posted by CollectiveMind to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

The main area I'm familiar with where there are rules around italics use (as opposed to being left up to the writer or publication's taste) is in titles. In that case, italics are always used. If Beale Street Could Talk is always If Beale Street Could Talk, even in a review or movie listings or a filmmaker's resume. You wouldn't use them once and then stop within the same piece of writing.
posted by the milkman, the paper boy at 4:35 PM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

I feel like you're going to have to be considerably more specific. Use of italics is almost completely governed by what style guide you're trying to be consistent with, and isn't just a Rule of Proper Grammar. There are probably around five generally "normal" ways to use italics, but they aren't 100% used the same way between various style guides:

1. Titles of books
2. Names of legal cases
3. Foreign words
4. Emphasis
5. (Mostly in fiction) Thoughts (as opposed to vocal speech)

In terms of references (which, honestly, I'm confused by your use of the word there), they'd always be used, if that's what the style guide says. So, for most legal style guides, if you're referencing legal cases, like, say, Brown v. Board of Education, you'd italicize Brown (the shorthand) on every reference. In many academic style guides, for book titles, it would be the same: "In Politics, Aristotle comes up with some ideas that were beyond his purpose in Politics."

But the big rule is: If you're not abiding by a style guide, the basic rule is just be consistent.
posted by General Malaise at 4:38 PM on February 15, 2019 [14 favorites]

Wikipedia lays it out quite nicely.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:41 PM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

So do you mean for foreign words and phrases, for instance? I've honestly started to learn toward not italicizing any of that, because it feels so othering to italicize non-English words, for instance. But most style guides will suggest that you should italicize those every time. With titles of works, I would say those should definitely always be italicized every time. Same for legal decisions.
posted by limeonaire at 4:50 PM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

I would not set a term in italics on first instance and then stop unless I explicitly warned the reader that's what I was doing…but I probably wouldn't do that either.

Sometimes in a text for a specialized audience, you might do away with typographical guideposts like italics, eg, if you're using foreign-language words when writing to an audience that already knows those words. But if you look at Scotusblog, to pick one example, they're fastidious about citing all cases in italics.

Foreign-language words are a fun case, because at some point, those words can stop being foreign. No one would set "sushi" in italics anymore. But maguro? Yes.
posted by adamrice at 5:02 PM on February 15, 2019

If you're talking about italicizing foreign terms, then it depends on the style guide that's most appropriate to your audience. Style guides are all over the place on this one, too:

APA 6th edition: "Do not use italics for foreign phrases and abbreviations common in English (i.e., phrases found as main entries in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2005)." p. 105. ""In general, use italics infrequently." p. 104
Turibian: "Italicize isolated words and phrases in foreign languages likely to be unfamiliar to readers of English, and capitalize them as in their language. ... Do not italicize foreign terms familiar enough to appear in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary." p. 312
MLA: "In general, italicize foreign words used in an English text. However, foreign words that normally appear in English need not be capitalized." p.79
Chicago Manual of Style: : “If a foreign word becomes familiar through repeated use throughout a work, it need be italicized only on its first occurrence. If it appears only rarely, however, italics may be retained.”
Associated Press doesn't recommend using italics for foreign terms but instead to use quotation marks. I don't know if they make a pronouncement on whether you should continue using quotations around the word throughout the text if it appears repeatedly. That seems ugly, if true.

If you don't have a higher authority dictating a style guide for you, then I would suggest that quotation marks is a little more informal and appropriate for a newspaper/bloggy type text; italics are a bit more formal and appropriate for magazine, article or book text, and in either case give your reader the benefit of the doubt when it comes to intelligence and don't beat them over the head with the foreignness of a foreign terms by continuing to italicize or set it off with quotes throughout. Less is always more when it comes to these kinds of typographical conventions. Use the dictionary to help you determine whether a term even is still considered foreign.
posted by drlith at 5:51 PM on February 15, 2019

Yeah, if you're talking about proper nouns that are titles and names of things and thus are in quotes or italics... you do that every single time. It's not like an abbreviation, where you write it out once only. You always write it the same way.
posted by bluedaisy at 6:00 PM on February 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

This is a style question and there’s no right answer. The style guide I use for my job says never use italics, ever.
posted by Ted Maul at 2:58 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

One place where it works the way you suggest is when italics are used to mark the introduction of a new technical term. "The foo that frobs the glob is known as a frinkle frobnitz. Many frinkle frobnitzes also blorp the bleepinator."

Not all styles use italics for new terms at all. But in styles that do, at least the ones I'm familiar with, it's only the first use that gets italicized. I've never seen a style where technical terms stay italicized through the whole document. (Which is not to say that none exist — people do all sorts of weird things with type.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:56 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Another occasion when italics are often used, not yet mentioned, is for names of boats/ships (and maybe other craft), which would be italicised on every mention, not just the first. But, again, dependent on the style guide.

When you talk about “italics and quotation marks”, I guess you might be referring to the way that an article might refer to the name of one work in italics, and another in quotation marks? In this case, italics would be used for, say, the name of a book, but quotation marks for the name of a short story. Or italics for the name of a magazine, but quotation marks for the name of an article in it.

e.g. The story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ from Poe’s collection Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Or the article ‘A Mind-Boggling Soviet Nostalgia Project’ in The Atlantic.

(Another slight wrinkle: some style guides would italicise that magazine as the Atlantic rather than The Atlantic.)

The Guardian is an example of a place that, unusually, doesn’t italicise the titles of things, just leaving them as standard text, e.g. the Guardian, or If Beale Street Could Talk.
posted by fabius at 3:50 AM on February 17, 2019

The use of quotation marks not yet mentioned is to indicate snark, or a sarcastic tone of voice. These marks would only be used subsequently if the tone was continued when the word or expression was repeated. Note that this usage is the source of the air quotes hand gesture.
posted by Rash at 10:43 AM on February 17, 2019