How to use italics and underlines | Punctuation | Khan Academy

- [Voiceover] Hello, grammarians.

Hello, Paige.

- [Voiceover] Hi, David.

- [Voiceover] So, Paige,
have you ever heard

of this man Aldus Manutius?

- [Voiceover] I don't think I have.

That's a pretty cool name, though.

- [Voiceover] His given name
was actually Aldo Manuzio.

He was a Venetian printer around 1500.

And this guy invented the italic typeface.

- [Voiceover] What?

- [Voiceover] Yeah.

So, italic is this word that
really just comes from Italy,

right, so he's from Venice,
which is in modern day Italy.

And 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.

And he was one of the first printers,

so he had this movable type
printing machine, this press.

And he developed these letters.

He cut them into pieces of metal

and he developed this
kind of slanted style.

And today we call this
the italic typeface.

- [Voiceover] Wow!

- [Voiceover] 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.

Paige, how do we use italics in English?

- [Voiceover] Italics
have two uses in English,

one is to emphasize and
the other is to indicate

that something is a title.

- [Voiceover] So we use it
for emphasis and titling.

Let's dive into the first one.

- [Voiceover] Okay.

- [Voiceover] 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.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, the word
really is said very strongly

in that sentence.

- [Voiceover] Mm-hmm.

Okay, and use case number two for titling.

And you know what?

To make it easier on ourselves,
let's pull up a text box.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, it's kind
of hard to write italics.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, which
is actually gonna 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?

- [Voiceover] So if you
got a title of something,

like book or a movie.

- [Voiceover] So, okay, so
we got a book, The Hobbit,

we got a movie,

and we have a full-length musical work

or like a symphony or an album

like Kate Bush's Hounds of Love.

All of those things can be
rendered in italic type.

So, okay, so for full
works, then, so for books,

movies,

and full-length musical works
like an album or a symphony.

- [Voiceover] Okay, so like
a song or a chapter of a book

is not considered a full work.

- [Voiceover] Correct.

- [Voiceover] Okay.

- [Voiceover] Now, as
you pointed out, Paige,

like the difference between
spicy and really here,

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.

So what we do when we're
writing things by hand

is we use the underline.

- [Voiceover] Yeah.

So the underline means
the same thing as italics.

You use it for titles, for full works,

but it's a lot easier to
hand write and underline

than it is to hand write italics.

- [Voiceover] Paige,
what's your favorite book?

- [Voiceover] Let's say The Giver.

That's a great book.

- [Voiceover] That is a great book.

All right, so I'm writing The Giver.

I want to indicate that it's a full title.

Voop, put that underline underneath it.

The Give 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.

- [Voiceover] That's right.

- [Voiceover] So, that's
where the italic typeface

comes from is this guy Aldus Manutius.

This is how we use it today.

You can learn anything.

David out.

- [Voiceover] Paige out.