Italic type

In typography, italic type refers to cursive typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. The influence from calligraphy can be seen in their usual slight slanting to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy.

Sometimes the term italic is wrongly applied on oblique fonts (mostly sans-serif), when they are merely distorted into a slanted orientation.

Uppercase letters in italic types are usually oblique instead of being true italics.

Swash capitals are uppercase letters that have flourishes added to them, originally designed to go with italic typefaces.

Italic type is often used for emphasis to distinguish or otherwise set off certain words within text.

Examples

An example of normal and true italics text:

The same example, as oblique text:

Italics are used for:

Emphasis: "Smith wasn't the only guilty party; it's true."
The titles of works that stand by themselves, such as books or newspapers: "There was a performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy." Works that appear within larger works, such as short stories, poems, or newspaper articles, are not italicized, but merely set off in quotation marks.
The names of ships: "The Queen Mary sailed last night."
Foreign words: "A splendid coq au vin was served."
Using a word as an example of a word, rather than for its semantic content (see use-mention distinction): "The word the is an article."
Introducing terms, especially technical terms or those used in an unusual or different way "University of Minnesota Style Manual": "Freudian psychology is based on the ego, the super-ego, and the id."
Sometimes in novels to indicate a character's thought process: "This can't be happening, thought Mary."
The Latin binary nomenclature (Genus species), in the taxonomy of living organisms: "Rats belong to the species rattus rattus."
Symbols for physical quantities and other mathematical variables: "The speed of light, c, is approximately equal to 3.00×10⁸ m s^-1."

If something within a run of italics needs to be italicized itself, the type is switched back to non-italicized (Roman) type: That sounds like the Ode to Joy played backwards, thought Mary.

In media where italicization is not possible, alternatives are used as substitutes:

In typewritten or handwritten text, underlining is typically used.
In plain-text computer files, including e-mail communication, italicized words are often indicated by surrounding them with slashes or other matched delimiters. For example:
- I was /really/ annoyed.
- They >completely< forgot me!
- I had _nothing_ to do with it.

History

The first italic-style typefaces were developed in the 1490s by Aldus Manutius for the Aldine Press. Aldus obtained a patent for the exclusive use of them, although the honor of the invention is more probably due to his typefounder, Franciso de Bologna. The typeface was not used for emphasis as we do today, but rather for its narrow and compact letterforms, which allowed the printing of pocket-sized books.

Use in web pages

In HTML, the i element is used to produce italic (or oblique) text. When an author wants to indicate emphasized text, the em element, often rendered in italics, should be used instead because it is more meaningful to user agents that cannot display italics. If the italics are ornamental rather than semantic, then the CSS declaration font-style: italic should be used instead of the i element.

Use with parentheses

The Chicago Manual of Style suggests that to avoid problems such as overlapping and unequally spaced characters, parentheses and brackets surrounding text that begins and ends in italic or oblique type should also be italicized. An exception to this rule applies when only one end of the parenthetical is italicized (in which case roman type is preferred).

References