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Emphasis: rewriting the sentence is preferable

Re: E m p h a s i s

Current discussion led me read Wikipedia on emphasis

Wikipedia cites Modern Language Association (MLA):

Many university researchers and academic journal editors advise not to use italics, or other approaches to emphasizing a word, unless essential, for example the Modern Language Association "discourages the use of italics in academic prose to emphasize or point, because they are unnecessary—most often, the unadorned words do the job without typographic assistance".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)#Recommendations_and_requirements

Is it OK to italicize a word for emphasis in my paper?

The MLA style discourages the use of italics in academic prose to emphasize or point, because they are unnecessary—most often, the unadorned words do the job without typographic assistance. And if they don’t, then rewording is often the best solution. This policy is a matter of stylistic convention, not grammar.

Reserve italics for emphasis for those few occasions when misreading is likely to result without them or when you simply feel that emphasis is the most effective means of getting your idea across.

Advice: You should always give extra consideration to how a sentence reads without the italics you were thinking of adding, much like a computer prompt that asks, before you hit Enter, “Are you sure?” If you’re sure—and only if you’re sure there’s no better solution—go ahead and italicize the word.

Published 23 January 2018

https://style.mla.org/italics-for-emphasis/

On a different note: I haven't checked whether the MLA discourages ordered lists in favour of unordered lists, though.

Actually:

Lists created using MLA essay format look different than a grocery list or any other type of vertical listing of items. Items in a list are included in your prose, rather than the traditional vertical style.

https://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/mla-format/

Numbered lists should only be used when the nature of the list necessitates a specific order.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_lists.html

Silly take on emphasis via repetition

The emphasis of specific words is an important aspect of written text.

Let me repeat that to stress the gravity: We need a way to emphasise words in sentences. Yes, we do.

If there's no large print, no boldface, no italics, no oblique, no underline, no monospace, no varying typeface … what could "we" do to highlight the importance of a word within (!) a line of text?

I have NO clue.
No clue w h a t s o e v e r .
Did I say – I – have – no – clue?

Help us out of this »misery« so Gemtext can live long and prosper.

Pretty PRETTY Please !!!

scnr

Roundup

On a more serious note, though

one might consider

rephrasing,
rephrasing using repetition,
exclamation mark in parentheses,
pauses (via dashes),
attention via quotation marks, maybe guillemets, or
using a different text format, e.g. AsciiDoc, MarkDown, EPUB, HTML, PDF.

And please pardon my rude S H O U T I N G

Edited to clarify that I like Gemtext as it is

and

that the above was a quick try on an ironically rant,
that I consider ALL CAPS as a discouraged way of emphasis,
as well as S p e r r s a t z , although I once found the idea witty myself.

So yeah, nice to see like-minded people! :)

Overall, and instead of creating another .gmi file, please allow me to applaud here to idiomdrottning's humble conclusion, that Gemtext is just …

readable enough.

gemini://idiomdrottning.org/emphasis-in-gemtext

For academic texts better choose other formats, probably LaTeX.

Great, how Cosmos is threading my/our chit-chat. Thanks! Is that a permalink?

gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/thread?3001

Old take

Revisiting one of my first thoughts on Gemini

2020-12-02 Gemini emphasis

External resource added 2022-02-18

https://robertheaton.com/better-sentences/

Quote

Use the active voice like your teachers told you

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to use the active voice (“I did this”) rather than the passive (“this was done by me”). Despite this, I still wrote:

| To prove to Bob that the message really was written by her, Alice uses PGP to cryptographically sign it before sending it.

Rewriting this in the active voice is an easy improvement:

| To prove to Bob that she wrote the message, Alice uses PGP to cryptographically sign it before sending it.

That said, Bob is sceptical that Alice wrote the message, so perhaps the emphasising “really” in the original version has some value. If we wanted to retain this accent then we could write:

| To prove to Bob that she really did write the message, Alice uses PGP to cryptographically sign it before sending it.

However, I think that intensifiers like “really” should be avoided where possible. Better to choose strong words and phrasing that make your emphasis for you.