Re: NATLANG: Geramn /heil/?

On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 02:25 +0000, Tim May wrote:
> Tristan Mc Leay wrote at 2005-11-27 12:14:27 (+1100)
>  >
>  > As has been pointed out, that also clashes.  There is no difference
>  > between underlining and italics in almost all cases (underlining is
>  > simply used when italics is not possible, but there are some people
>  > who use word processors too often for their continued good health &
>  > underline headings and emphasis), so there's usually no clash. (The
>  > most common case when there *is* a contrast between underlining and
>  > italics is with hyperlinks, and so obviously there is no problem in
>  > plain text when you can't do links!)
>  >
>  > Many people use *asterisks* for emphasis and _underscores_ for
>  > other uses of italics; this isn't really a distinction of bold and
>  > italics because bold isn't really emphasis, but rather so it stands
>  > out from the surrounding text.  So "*Surely* George Orwell wrote
>  > _Lord of the Rings_!" translated into proper non-ASCII typography
>  > would have both "Surely" and "Lord of the Rings" in italics.
Hmm, that paragraph didn't seem to come through quite properly. I'll try
it again with hard returns (which ISTR I used in the first paragraph
even though it naturally wrapped there):

Many people use *asterisks* for emphasis and _underscores_ for other
uses of italics; this isn't really a distinction of bold and italics
because bold isn't really emphasis, but rather so it stands out from
the surrounding text.  So "*Surely* George Orwell wrote _Lord of the
Rings_!" translated into proper non-ASCII typography would have both
"Surely" and "Lord of the Rings" in italics.

There, perhaps that shows up better. (Or maybe it was just re-wrapped by
your email client when you pressed "reply", but it took a while to get
it just-so so I want it to come through properly ;)

> Personally I'm inclined to see asterisks as roughly equivalent to
> *bold* text (when transcribing from print, for instance), but for
> original compositions it doesn't really make much difference.
Well yeah, when transcribing from text it tends to be used as bold, so
for instance the introduction to a Wikipedia article might be:

        *Typography* (from the Greek words _typos_ = form and _graphein_
        =
        to write) is the art and technique of selecting and arranging
        type
        styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character
        spacing
        and word spacing for typeset application.
(ooh, freaky given my earlier posting! That indentation is just my email
client's default!)

But I was indeed intending to focus on original compositions, in which,
as you say, the difference between *asterisks* and _underscores_ is
comparable to the difference between <em> and <i> in HTML.

> Semantically it's an indicator of emphasis, whereas for titles only
> italics will do.  (Actually, in HTML I try to make exactly this
> destinction between <em> and <i> tags, both of which are normally
> realized as slanted text...)  As you say, one hardly ever needs to
> distinguish underlining specifically, so there's no generally
> understood mechanism for indicating it.
>
> Of course, hére, some have in the past tried showing emphasis by
> áccenting the stressed syllable, as in Dutch.  It hasn't really caught
> on, but one has the option.
Yeah. I reckon that's "cute", one might say, but I don't really think
it's as useful as *asterisks* or anything... They're kinda harder to
see; they don't emphasise as much. Also, I imagine for many people it's
not all that easy to type in arbitrary acute accented vowels...

--
Tristan

Reply