Re: NATLANG: Geramn /heil/?

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.
 >

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.
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.

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