MM: Emphasis

Have you noticed that so many punctuation points are working overtime these days? Not just the apostrophe, but also Quotation marks, which are being used not only for dialogue or for the occasional title, but for emphasis. As in when somebody writes something like: Well, I don’t really “believe” in ghosts, but haunted houses give me a chill.

Then there are the extra periods, exclamation points, and question marks added to all sorts of things for emphasis: You did what????? How wonderful!!! To be quite clear, you only ever need one.

(Although, I’ll admit right here–I never claimed to be perfect–that I’ve been known to do two every now and again in an e-mail when I’m particularly excited: Congratulations on getting the promotion, having a baby, winning the lottery, and being interviewed by Oprah all on the same day!! I suppose that, in informal writing, a little extra enthusiasm once in a while can be justified . . . but it’s still a lazy habit which I’m trying to break. Honest!!)

Of course, there’s always text-based shouting: WHICH IS WHEN PEOPLE TYPE IN ALL CAPS because, of course, it looks like the writer is raising his or her voice. Please, never write in all capital letters. It makes you look like you don’t know how to use a shift key, or are too lazy to bother.

If you must capitalize a word or so for emphasis in an arena where italics are unavailable–like leaving blog comments–I suppose you may, but you should try not to. (I’ll admit, this is one I do far too frequently. Sometimes it’s just EASIER to write in caps than to change the formatting.)

How should you denote emphasis when you’re writing?

Ideally, with italics. You know, the slanted font-face. It’s really its main purpose in life, with a sideline in doing the occasional title. Personally, I think that when you use other, less-appropriate forms of text-emphasis, it just makes the italic feature sad. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?

It’s traditional to use an underscore in manuscripts for text you want to have italicized, because typesetters don’t always catch italics when converting text to type (not to mention that old-school typewriters didn’t have italics as an option). In this modern age of word processing, however, that rule is changing.

Bold text can be used for emphasis, but in a perfect world, should be left mostly to headings and things like dictionary entries–but not in the middle of paragraphs. Although, again, this depends. If you’re writing a manuscript, too much bold in the actual text is tacky, gaudy–like wearing too much jewelry or too much makeup. Too much bold shouts for attention and can be distracting, rather than simply drawing the eye its way. If you’re writing something like ad copy, of course, this is exactly what you want, so, “bold” away.

(Oops, wait, there I go, using quotations for emphasis . . . how tacky of me!)

And, thanks, Judy, for the inspiration for this one.