I'm old enough to remember that agents and editors preferred italics to be underlined in manuscripts instead of actually italicizing the word or phrase. The underline was some sort of industry signal that told the printer to italicize. Has that changed? Do editors and agents now want the actual italics vs. underline?
posted
The underline method is still usually the case but it pays to check the guidelines for individual publications as some may vary.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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posted
Underline IS the standard. The reason is, italics in the fonts ar easily missed when a copyeditor reads through, underlines aren't.
Posts: 3687 | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
According to what I'm seeing on-line, the old-fashioned way is still the right way (as advocated by Even Marshall of THE MARSHALL PLAN WORKBOOK: WRITING YOUR NOVEL FROM START TO FINISH and other writing gurus I'm reading now----Oh & BTW here's a link to a formatting guide for short stories that is pretty much identical to Marshall's and the others' advice: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html )
[This message has been edited by WraithOfBlake (edited April 02, 2010).]
posted
I have read on some blogs that the italics is an old fashioned thing that the sci fi people are the only ones who are holding to really strongly. But I am speculative fiction (I have some sci-fi,some traditional fantasy, some urban fantasy), so it really doesn't matter to me what any other genre specifies. Also, it seems to me that an editor that had a preference for italics would be more ok with underlining than an editor with a preference for underling would be when receiving something with italics.
Posts: 303 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Off-topic a little: I've never found the underlining method of Microsoft Works that easy to use...used to be, in the typewriter days, you backed up and typed the underlining on it yourself---if Works lets you do that, I can't figure it out. Instead you have to do this-that-and-the-other-thing, not as convenient unless you're underlining half your MS---which is a bad thing to do.
I remember when I went into Internet Fan Fiction, I found a number of writers used *asterixes* for *emphasis*...our stuff just got written and posted in HTML files, so what we wrote was what we saw...I kinda grew to like it and used that. But it wouldn't do for a Pro-manuscript submission, so back to underlining I went.
posted
That's why I like reveal codes in WordPerfect, makes it much easier to control the formatting.
Anyways, yes please underline for italics. I was the tech editor for a student magazine and I had to go through and underline all the italics myself on the hard copy. I missed some, pretty important ones sometimes.
Even when working from an electronic copy step one is stripping it of its formatting so we can apply our own formatting. (And get rid of weird little tags that tend to show up on their own.) Then the tech editor has to go back through and add the italics manually.
posted
Of course I do that to underline...it's just so damned awkward to do...and why not have something that'll let you back up and underline-by-key?
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Robert, I don't know if it'll help but the hot keys for underline are: Ctrl + u
If you hold Control and then push 'u' before you start the word or words you want underlined it will do it as you go. You end the underlining the same way. I like this method because my already slow typing doesn't get hindered even more by having to reach for the mouse.
The same works with 'b' for bold and 'i' for actual italics.
Forgive me if this is too elementary but I thought it might be some worthwhile info.
quote:Of course I do that to underline...it's just so damned awkward to do...and why not have something that'll let you back up and underline-by-key?
Sorry, I should have known you would have figured that out. To me highlighting to underline seems so much more easy then going back over the text to underline. I guess it is just what I am used to doing.
[This message has been edited by MAP (edited April 06, 2010).]
posted
I'm a little of a tech geek You could use the arrow keys to go back to the end of the section that you want to underline, then hold shift and push the arrow key back to the front to highlight it all. Then push Ctrl+u
Might be more like your used to.
[This message has been edited by Jonsul (edited April 11, 2010).]
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