That ol' textile em/i niggle

Destry · 2018-03-08 10:01:03

It has irritated me for years, pithily so, but like mosquitoes. And I know there’s nothing to be done about it. But damn if I don’t wish Textile’s implementation of i and em was the other way around.

It only matters if one gives a crud about the semantic (and thus technical) difference between _emphasis_ and __italic__, a condition I suffer, of course. But unless you’re trying to sound like an arsehole to anyone using a screen reader, there is simply far less need for emphasis than italic, and thus it would be great to use the simpler syntax for the majority of situations (e.g. titles are only ever italic, never emphasized).

Though, truth be told, it’s been years since I tested with a screen reader. Maybe it’s a moot point now. But I sure struggle, back and forth, in my own mental hell about it every time I work with titles (e.g. endnotes and bibliographies).

In Textup, we must get it right!

Bloke · 2018-03-08 10:32:56

I went through a period where I used double underscore instead of single, then I just kind of fell back into using a single one because it’s less typing.

I’m not semantically sure of the difference because I’m not classically trained in the art of wordsmithery. But ostensibly, shouldn’t a markup system only really support  (and by inference ) since using  and  aren’t as semantic, and old-school HTML holdovers?

colak · 2018-03-08 10:38:13

On our site we use emphasis, italic, bold and strong (although admittedly I still have a backlog of texts to update). I think that for most people the semantics are not relevant but they are good to have in the textile armoury.

philwareham · 2018-03-08 14:30:11

 and  have semantic meaning,  and  have no meaning apart from to draw the eye to a particular item, so I’d opine Textile has it the correct way round already? At least the option is there to use both in Textile.

The  element should be used as a last resort when no other element is more appropriate.

Authors are encouraged to consider whether other elements might be more applicable than the  element…

From HTML Living Standard.

Bloke · 2018-03-08 14:38:56

Yes, that was kinda my point. Glad it’s backed up by the HTML living standard!

Destry · 2018-03-08 15:00:30

I don’t know what the HTML Living Standard is, but according to the HTML 5.2 recommendation, the two are entirely supported and have distinct purposes (as English majors well know), clearly explained for the non-classicly–trained wordsmiths :)

Yes, em and strong have semantic meaning, which is exactly why you don’t use them, in this case em, every time you simply want something italic. Because, as mentioned, tech, like screen readers and transcription software take the semantic difference into account for benefit of the blind or hearing impaired, for example. And I’ll bet other voice interfaces, such as Alexa and your future toilet. There’s a big difference between you __stink__ and you _stink_!

So, while I rarely need to make emphasis in sentences, I often need to italicize titles, Latin, French, etc in my English writing, none of which should be emphasized without, as I said, sounding like an arsehole in digital transcription.

philwareham · 2018-03-08 16:22:31

Wouldn’t you <cite> a title and <q> French? Fair enough for latin though.

phiw13 · 2018-03-08 22:53:50

philwareham wrote #309755:

Wouldn’t you <cite> a title and <q> French? Fair enough for latin though.

Indeed those two seems much more appropriate for Destry’s use cases. Not sure how Latin is used,  might be OK.

Destry · 2018-03-08 22:57:40

philwareham wrote #309755:

Wouldn’t you <cite> a title and <q> French?

Depends if you’re actually citing or quoting (inline) those particular text strings. Otherwise no, that’s not a rule for marking up titles and foreign text. Certainly not one I would follow.

A citation, as far as it concerns a referencing system, could be a clause or the whole sentence, of which only part might be a title (e.g. a book title). So you would italicize the title and cite the whole clause or sentence that encloses it. In another context, say an actual reference item in a bibliography; there’s no cite there at all, it’s the source, but you still italicize the book names, for example. And a cite could be applied on any number of strings, not just titles; names of people, places, etc, none of which would be italiced.

A q is for quoting (inline) something that was written or said elsewhere, regardless of whether it’s a foreign language or not. So it’s the same difference as citing. If a foreign lang is part or all of the quotation, that much of the quotation only is italized and the whole quotation wrapped in q. But I could write something like follows in a paragraph, without it being a quotation, but still needing to italicize the foreign string:

My name is Destry, but I go by other noms de plume too…

Whether I should use foreign strings so liberally in English text is a different matter altogether and up to the editor and style guide. But when they are used, they should be italicized.

Destry · 2018-03-08 23:15:10

Didn’t mean for this to get so involved, was just hoping to influence the direction of Textup. ;)

Frankly, I’m surprised Dean dropped the ball on this one. ?

I think, if my memory serves, the propeller heads wanted to drop i and b before the W3C took on the HTML5 spec, but I’m sure the exegetes raised hell and demanded they stay for the fundamental distinctions they provide, notably i.

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