that certain je ne sais quoi
[an addendum on italics]
[originally published February 19, 2025]
“Does the shift in editorial fashion away from italics apply to non-English words in narrative?” I was asked after my previous post on the subject. “I’ve noticed that some memoirs I’ve been reading lately use roman for non-English words.”
Ah yes, an excellent question, which I realize I’ve answered in dribs and drabs and allusions and hints in various previous posts, but let’s get it done all at once.
Back when I started in the proofreading and copyediting racket, the rule of thumb was that all words in the main part of the lexicon of unspoken book publishing consensus—i.e., the ninth edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in the early nineties, eventually the tenth and eleventh editions as the years rolled on—were to be taken as English and set in roman, from sushi and kibbutz to siesta, quid pro quo, and weltschmerz,1 and everything tucked into the section on foreign words and phrases in the back of the book (or not tucked anywhere at all) was to be taken as not-English and set in italics.
Over time, though, two things occurred to me (not only to me, to be sure, but, sure, to me):
1, The English language hoovers up words and domesticates them faster than the dictionary can keep up with, and, 2, and more important, Something happens when you set words in italics, and it’s not always in the best interests of the text at hand.
If, for instance, you’re writing (or copyediting) a novel in which the characters easily and fluently slide from English to Spanish, or English to Tagalog, or English to, well, anything at all, the characters aren’t sliding into a foreign language; they’re simply speaking the way they speak, liquidly bilingual. Setting those characters’ non-English utterances in italics would make them, then, foreign and strange and other, which they’re not intended to be. Setting them in roman scrapes the otherness off them.
On the other hand, to be sure (there is always an other hand, sometimes a few other hands), if I were writing, or copyediting, a novel about, say, a young American alone in Florence, Italy, who feels increasingly isolated because of the overwhelming and impenetrable foreignness of it all, and who finds that he can’t get by with his rusty high school French, much less his English, I might well choose to set all the buzz of Italian that surrounds and bedevils our poor tourist in italics.2
Again, as with all things prosy, you make the best choices for the work in front of you. One size does not, should not, fit all.
I guess that the only other thing I’d like to add on the subject of italics is: Don’t go overboard setting isolated words in even your English-language text in italics for emphasis, which a lot of writers like to do far too much, I think, particularly in dialogue. A, if you’ve set your words in a good and sound and eloquent order, your readers should be able to make out for themselves where the points of stress occur. And if you’re constantly thinking that your readers won’t be able to follow your intentions without bits and bobs of italics to point the way, perhaps you might want to take a harder look at your sentences and see if they’re not, all on their own, doing their job properly. And, B, readers do not, I think, like to be told, repeatedly, how to read.3
I recall, a decade or so ago, copyediting a novel in which, over the course of a solid 100,000 words, I (respectfully) suggested to the author, oh, perhaps a dozen and a half times, that I thought a line of dialogue might be assisted with a little aslant type. And the author (politely) stetted me each and every one of those perhaps a dozen and a half times. Now, that’s confidence in one’s writing.4
As always: Thank you all for being here, and thank you, especially, to subscribers, and especially especially to paying subscribers, who make it possible for me to keep writing.
Yes, I know that the Germans like to capitalize their nouns, but if you’re going to decide that weltschmerz is English, then bring it, I say, fully on board and lowercase it.
Now it can be told: On my first trip to Europe in the early 1980s, I did remarkably well with my rusty high school French, which got less rusty by the minute, in Paris, and there I was merrily chatting away with waiters and taxi drivers and les autres citoyens. But I decided—y’know, as long as I’d come all this way—to take myself via train to Florence (quite likely with visions of Forster dancing in my head), where, to my dismay (not, to be sure, with the Italians, but with myself for not having thought it through), almost no one I encountered—in the train station, in a nearby hotel, in restaurants—could (or, I suppose, would) engage me in English. The past is a foreign country, and vicey versey.
Again, I’m not utterly and entirely opposed to the use of italics for emphasis. I try not to be utterly and entirely opposed to anything, at least as far as prose is concerned. But don’t oversalt your soup.
Was the author utterly and entirely opposed to the use of italics for emphasis? No, as she went on to demonstrate in other novels. She simply didn’t feel the need to use italics for emphasis in this particular novel.
On your trip to Florence … I suppose they all spoke Italics there.
It's only fair that weltschmerz should be shared by all.