How to use italics and underlines | Punctuation | Khan Academy

Hello, grammarians! Hello, Paige! Hi, David!

So, Paige, have you ever heard of this man Aldus Minucius?

I don't think I have. That's a pretty cool name, though. His given name was actually Aldo Manuzio. He was a Venetian printer around 1500, and this guy invented the italic typeface.

What?

Yeah, so italic is this word that really just comes from Italy, right? So he's from Venice, which is in modern-day Italy. What it refers to is text that is kind of on its side, so like this kind of slopes to the right—that's italic.

Um, he was one of the first printers, so he had this movable type printing machine, this press. He developed these letters, cut them into pieces of metal, and he developed this kind of slanted style. Today, we call this the italic typeface.

Wow!

Yeah, actually, technically, we'd call this the italic script because it's based on an earlier kind of hand from calligraphy. But all the same, today we have this thing in text called italics.

So, okay, so we've got our typeface here, and it comes in two flavors. We've got Roman, which is kind of standing right up, and italic, which is slanted to the right.

Um, Paige, how do we use italics in English?

Italics have two uses in English. One is to emphasize, and the other is to indicate that something is a title. So we use it for emphasis and titling.

Let's dive into the first one.

Okay, so if we're trying to use italics to emphasize something in text, we would just use it to set off one word. So for example, "That's a really spicy pepper." Yeah, the word "really" is said very strongly in that sentence.

Okay, and use case number two is for titling. And you know what? To make it easier on ourselves, let's pull up a text box.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to write italics, which is actually going to lead us into another part of this video. You'll see. But right now, okay, I got my italic type selected. So how do titles work?

So if you have a title of something like a book or a movie...

So, okay, so we got our book "The Hobbit." We got our movie, and we have a full-length musical work, or like a symphony or an album, like Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love." Right? All those things can be rendered in italic type.

So, okay, for full works, then. So for books, movies, and full-length musical works, like an album or a symphony.

Okay, so like a song or a chapter of a book is not considered a full work.

Correct.

Okay, now, as you pointed out, Paige, like the difference between "spicy" and "really" here is not the easiest to discern. So if I were going to be writing out the title of something just by hand, it's pretty hard to do italics.

Uh, so what we do when we're writing things by hand is we use the underline.

Yeah, so the underline means the same thing as italics. You use it for titles of full works, but it's a lot easier to handwrite an underline than it is to handwrite italics.

Paige, what's your favorite book?

Uh, let's say "The Giver."

That's a great book!

That is a great book! Alright, so I'm writing "The Giver." I want to indicate that it's a full title. Voop! Put that underline underneath it.

"The Giver" is Paige's favorite book.

So, the way we're underlining "The Giver" is the same functionally as the way we've italicized "The Hobbit," "The Thief and the Cobbler," or "Hounds of Love."

That's right!

So, uh, that's where the italic typeface comes from, is this guy Aldus Minucius. This is how we use it today.

Uh, you can learn anything.

Dve it out.

Page out!