Quote:
Originally Posted by graycyn
*IF* you are doing semantic markup, how would you treat something like:
No! No! No!
Would you mark up each exclamation:
Code:
<em>No!</em> <em>No!</em> <em>No!</em>
or make it simpler with:
Code:
<em>No! No! No!</em>
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Do I Put Spaces Inside Italics/Emphasis?
Yep. The 2nd is better + more correct + much easier to read.
Spaces are a part of the entire "emphasis chunk" and are just as important!
Imagine you had a long book title:
- <p>I was reading <i>This</i> <i>Book:</i> <i>Long</i> <i>Title</i> on the train ride. It was the <em>greatest</em> <em>ever</em>!</p>
- <p>I was reading <i>This Book: Long Title</i> on the train ride. It was the <em>greatest ever</em>!</p>
Of course, the 2nd is preferred.
(It's also easier to imagine your italics/emphasis with a yellow highlight in the background! Would the space between words be included in your highlight?)
- - -
Side Note: One proofing trick you can do is temporarily use this CSS:
Code:
i {
background-color: yellow;
}
em {
background-color: orange;
}
It'll help you as you're skimming through your book.
- - -
Does Punctuation Go Inside the <i> or <em>?
Now, the more interesting example comes into play with punctuation!
Do you include the ending commas/periods + exclamation/question/quotation marks inside of your <i> + <em>?
It depends. But huge lean towards NO.
See my famous examples from:
where I colorized italics in RED + made it a larger font:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
Completely agree with Jellby.
DO NOT include the punctuation in the italics if it doesn't belong.
[...]
The old way would have given this in [Chicago Manual of Style] 14:
- Smith played the title role in <i>Hamlet,</i> <i>Macbeth,</i> and <i>King Lear;</i> after his final performance, during which many in the audience wept, he announced his retirement.
- Smith played the title role in Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear; after his final performance, during which many in the audience wept, he announced his retirement.
[...] CMOS 15:
- Smith played the title role in <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>, and <i>King Lear</i>; after his final performance, during which many in the audience wept, he announced his retirement.
- Smith played the title role in Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear; after his final performance, during which many in the audience wept, he announced his retirement.
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Would you do:
Code:
<i>Hamlet, Macbeth,</i> and <i>King Lear;</i>
Is the book called "Hamlet, Macbeth"? No. Of course not!*
- - -
* Although maybe we're not talking about Shakespeare, the famous author—maybe it's some Fakespeare guy who actually DID create a book called "Hamlet, Macbeth"!
- - -
What's This Text? <i> or <em>?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
If you are the author, you can decide if Emphasised or Italic is correct, otherwise it's very hard to decide.
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Strong disagree.
In the vast majority of cases, you can figure out author intended italics vs. emphasis.
For example, see my "3. "Spellcheck List" for Search":
where you can spit out a list of all (italics) in a book.
And where I showed a similar application for acronyms/smallcaps:
Seeing them in list-form, you can quickly map 90%+ to their intended <i> or <em>.
Just because you may have a hard time in the ambiguous 10%, doesn't mean you have to hold everything else back.
- - - - - -
Italics vs. Emphasis:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
3. "Spellcheck List" for Search
[...] Past few years, I've "secretly" been using this concept of "Italic Lists" to catch typos/errors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
For example, ripping every single <i> out and sorting into an alphabetical list:
Code:
<i>Enciclopedia Italiana</i>
<i>New York Times</i>
<i>Volksgemeinschaft</i>
<i>Wall Street Journal</i>
<i>Washington Post</i>
<i>individual</i>
<i>laissez-faire</i>
<i>negative</i>
From a glance, you can usually tell which ones are meant to be <i> (newspapers, book titles, foreign words/terms) and which ones are <em> (individual words).
[...] |
Splitting ALL italics, then sorted alphabetically + uniques... opens up a whole new class of previously missed errors.
Code:
<i>Wall Street Journal</i>
<i>Wa11 Street Journal</i>
right next to each other stands out like a sore thumb.
Having everything displayed beautifully in a "Sigil/Calibre Spellcheck List"-form would be super icing on top.
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and Acronyms vs. Smallcaps:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex2002ans
Advanced Find/Replace (List-Based)
[...] You'd probably want to skip replacing acronyms + "AD" and "BC", but apply that regex on all others:
Code:
Found | Replace | Hits
________|_______________________________________|______
BC | | 100
AD | | 47
FIGURE | <span class="smallcaps">Figure</span> | 10
ALEX | <span class="smallcaps">Alex</span> | 2
CIA | | 1
FBI | | 1
USA | | 1
[...]
With the list form, you can see patterns, double-check, then selectively apply Replaces (or Replace All just like now... just with more information at your fingertips).
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Combine that with the background-color trick above, and I bet your eyes will solve most of these within a split second.
- - - - - -
Should I Mark Italics Or Emphasis If I Can?
Quote:
Originally Posted by graycyn
When in doubt, I read text aloud, to see how it sounds with and without emphasis. And then do the best I can. Which is what anyone doing the reading for an audiobook or translating a text into another language is also doing. Interpreting.
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Yes. Exactly.
And remember:
Think of Accessibility as a sliding scale from 0%->100%.
As long as you are trying your best, and moving in the right direction, that's good enough.
Like with HTML language (lang + xml:lang)...
You don't
have to mark up every single Greek or
Chinese word in an English book. But if you do, that's nice!
25% of the "foreign words" marked up correctly is better than 0%!
And if you properly mark your books up NOW, you'll
auto-benefit when tools come out LATER.
(Even from 2016->2023, the tools got so much better!)
Are <i> and <em> the Same?
No!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turtle91
Jon, you constantly refuse to understand the point that “emphasis” does not always mean “italics” [...] Emphasis can be anything from color to font to underline to voice stress to normal font within an italicized phrase or whatever. [...]
Please stop bringing up this argument every time someone mentions <em>.
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Yep. Especially in foreign languages, like Chinese/Japanese/Korean, that:
- Don't have italics.
- Have Emphasis Marks (little dots) over/under or to the left/right of characters.
and other languages, like Hebrew:
- expands the spacing between characters
and Arabic:
- stretches the entire word.
This was all discussed in extreme detail in: