Italic or underline?

folkchick · Sep 9, 2010

Basic question, but probably very important. Should a short story submission use italics or underlines in the manuscript?

Thank you!

DeleyanLee · Sep 9, 2010

Pick one and be consistent.

Most people use italics nowadays, though.

Dr.Gonzo · Sep 9, 2010

I have very recent feedback: I sent a short out to a mag and heard back a couple of weeks ago that it's been shortlisted. The editor said I no longer need to underline but should now use italics. They didn't hold it against me at all but wanted to make it clear.

Maryn · Sep 9, 2010

Whichever the submission guidelines specify.

If they don't say, but do specify a font, I go with underlining in Courier, italic in Times New Roman. It just feels right.

Maryn, never rejected for this reason

folkchick · Sep 9, 2010

Shew. Shortlisted? Yikes. Thanks for the quick information, I appreciate it!

Port Iris · Sep 9, 2010

If there is ever a worry about font styles being lost across file formats or software, the common denotation for italics is actually bounding by underscores.

ie. "He said _what_?" would be printed "He said what?"

Polenth · Sep 9, 2010

When they ask for standard manuscript format, I underline. When they ask for italics, I send them as italics. If they don't say, I send them standard manuscript format.

Julie Worth · Sep 9, 2010

I think the de facto standard is now TNR with italics. The older the agent or editor, the more likely they'll prefer courier, and italics are almost invisible in courier.

Polenth · Sep 9, 2010

Julie Worth said:
I think the de facto standard is now TNR with italics. The older the agent or editor, the more likely they'll prefer courier, and italics are almost invisible in courier.

It depends on your genre perhaps, but a lot of SFF magazines ask for standard manuscript format and link to William Shunn's guide. The age of the editor doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

Julie Worth · Sep 9, 2010

Polenth said:
It depends on your genre perhaps, but a lot of SFF magazines ask for standard manuscript format and link to William Shunn's guide. The age of the editor doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

Even Shunn, who is surprisingly young to be a traditionalist, admits that things are changing.

stormie · Sep 9, 2010

I still underline in TNR, and no one has said a word about changing it when the work is accepted.

Unless they specifically ask for standard formatting or italics, do what you feel is best. If the editor likes your work, but wants it the other way, they'll tell you. They're not going to reject you just because you underlined instead of italicized.

Now if you use some sort of hard-to-read font, then that's another story.

folkchick · Sep 9, 2010

Well, the good news is I use TNR and went ahead using italics as a default, so I'll just keep them in. I had heard conflicting things on the internet, but wasn't sure. Funny enough, I think William Shunn's website was where I read to use underlines!

Polenth · Sep 9, 2010

Julie Worth said:
Even Shunn, who is surprisingly young to be a traditionalist, admits that things are changing.

I'm sure they are in some areas. I've heard agents tend to prefer TNR and the literary short markets seem less bothered. But the SFF markets still heavily favour standard manuscript format and link to the guide as the way they want submissions.

So saying that TNR is the standard now is somewhat misleading. It might be for agent submissions, and it might be for genres I don't write, but people submitting to SFF short story markets can't really avoid standard manuscript format.

jbpark · Sep 9, 2010

I've been using underline/Courier for SF submissions, and TNR/italics for everything else. I've yet to get a 'your formatting was WRONG' reply, so I must be doing something right.

Julie Worth · Sep 9, 2010

jbpark said:
I've been using underline/Courier for SF submissions, and TNR/italics for everything else.

Surprising that SF, of all genres, is mired in the past.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 9, 2010

Port Iris said:
If there is ever a worry about font styles being lost across file formats or software, the common denotation for italics is actually bounding by underscores.

ie. "He said _what_?" would be printed "He said what?"

No it's not. It's really not. Converting underscore bounded text for print publication is a PITA. It looks amateur.

Underscores are an informal convention only for Web/HTML publication, not for print.

If the site doesn't specify, no one is going to have a cow over Courier and underlining; one reason it's still common is that there are a number of conversion tools for converting underlines to properly set italics.

Courier is still favored by many publishers partly because the algorithms and formulas for calculating the number of pages and sections for a book based on ms. pages are all based on Courier.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 10, 2010

Use whatever is specified, and underlining is the best bet for print if nothing is specified. So is Courier 12, rather than TNR. Underlining never hurts, and can save an editor work, or having italics fail to show up in your story because someone missed the actual italics.

Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock, for example, both specify underlining in their guidelines.

shunn · Sep 10, 2010

Julie Worth said:
Even Shunn, who is surprisingly young to be a traditionalist, admits that things are changing.

Young as he seems, Shunn actually started submitting seriously to SF magazines in 1982.

Port Iris · Sep 10, 2010

Medievalist said:
No it's not. It's really not. Converting underscore bounded text for print publication is a PITA. It looks amateur.

Underscores are an informal convention only for Web/HTML publication, not for print.

If the site doesn't specify, no one is going to have a cow over Courier and underlining; one reason it's still common is that there are a number of conversion tools for converting underlines to properly set italics.

Courier is still favored by many publishers partly because the algorithms and formulas for calculating the number of pages and sections for a book based on ms. pages are all based on Courier.

I made sure to add the caveat of "If there is ever a worry about font styles being lost across file formats or software". I was not saying that any of the other methods were wrong, just that underscores are available for these circumstances.

Because of the increased usage of web publication and electronic submissions, I believe the usage of underscores is valid. I actually prefer it because my magazine publishes in web format. I find the extra effort converting for our print version, which minimally more strenuous than converting from underline, to be worth not loosing formatting when moving text to HTML.

I certainly wouldn't consider an author an amateur for using underscores. If an editor was that uptight about it, he can define a style or express for authors not to use them in submission guidelines.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 10, 2010

Port Iris said:
I made sure to add the caveat of "If there is ever a worry about font styles being lost across file formats or software". I was not saying that any of the other methods were wrong, just that underscores are available for these circumstances.

Because of the increased usage of web publication and electronic submissions, I believe the usage of underscores is valid. I actually prefer it because my magazine publishes in web format. I find the extra effort converting for our print version, which minimally more strenuous than converting from underline, to be worth not loosing formatting when moving text to HTML.

I certainly wouldn't consider an author an amateur for using underscores. If an editor was that uptight about it, he can define a style or express for authors not to use them in submission guidelines.

It isn't a matter of appearing amateurish, it's a matter of what agents, editors, typesetters, etc., are trained to look for. As an editor, underscores would piss me off, though I'd never mention it to the writer. (Editors seldom mention anything to writers, unless teh format is completely unusable.) If the writer underscores, I have to go through a print manuscript with a pen and underline everything to make sure it's spotted, and if it's an electronic file, I have to do the same thing electronically.

Seriously, if you're losing HTML format because of underlining, or working harder because of underlining, you need newer technology.

Julie Worth · Sep 10, 2010

shunn said:
Young as he seems, Shunn actually started submitting seriously to SF magazines in 1982.

Heh. I won't argue with the man himself!

shunn · Sep 11, 2010

Jamesaritchie said:
It isn't a matter of appearing amateurish, it's a matter of what agents, editors, typesetters, etc., are trained to look for. As an editor, underscores would piss me off, though I'd never mention it to the writer. (Editors seldom mention anything to writers, unless teh format is completely unusable.) If the writer underscores, I have to go through a print manuscript with a pen and underline everything to make sure it's spotted, and if it's an electronic file, I have to do the same thing electronically.

Three of the premier genre fiction podcasts -- Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Podcastle -- all request submissions be pasted into the body of an email with underscores instead of underlining or italics. Incredible as it sounds, there are editors who want things that way. But it's usually because they want the submission in the body of an email.

http://escapepod.org/guidelines/
http://pseudopod.org/guidelines/
http://podcastle.org/guidelines/

Julie Worth · Sep 11, 2010

shunn said:
But it's usually because they want the submission in the body of an email.
http://podcastle.org/guidelines/

Or because they want it in plain text.

Port Iris · Sep 11, 2010

Jamesaritchie said:
It isn't a matter of appearing amateurish, it's a matter of what agents, editors, typesetters, etc., are trained to look for. As an editor, underscores would piss me off, though I'd never mention it to the writer. (Editors seldom mention anything to writers, unless teh format is completely unusable.) If the writer underscores, I have to go through a print manuscript with a pen and underline everything to make sure it's spotted, and if it's an electronic file, I have to do the same thing electronically.

Seriously, if you're losing HTML format because of underlining, or working harder because of underlining, you need newer technology.

Again, I was just saying there are circumstances where underscores are beneficial, such as those brought up by Shunn and Julie Worth. I'm not saying people should use them all the time. As an editor, they suit me just fine.

I also thought it was pretty clear from my caveat that I was talking about digital manuscripts, which are all I work with. Underscores do have the added advantage of being findable by a simple text search, which is available in most text editors that I know and is faster than I can manually search for underlined text.

Truthfully, I find underscore bounded text to be just as easy to convert as underlined text. In MS Word, deleting and replacing the 2nd underscore will automatically convert the bounded text. Like many other web publishers, Port Iris has an extremely small staff, so I do almost all text manipulation myself.

Although I don't generally have a problem with losing formatting, it's a lot easier to do when going to plain text HTML editors, which some people do use. I just like that, when I do work with them, I don't worry about the possibility at all. It's not like I convert to underscores then back.

jaksen · Sep 19, 2010

Wasn't the reason we all underlined (a generation ago) was because on a standard typewriter we couldn't italicize?

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