Select existing text to be italicized. Place your cursor in front of the first letter in a block of text to be italicized. Hold down your left mouse button and drag your cursor over the block of text to highlight it, then release your mouse button. Italicize new text. Place your cursor at the location within the body of text where you want to type new, italicized text. In most cases, this will be at the end of the text.
The applications in Microsoft Office and many similar applications feature either a toolbar or ribbon interface that includes a set of text formatting button controls. Among these controls is a button showing a capital “I” slanted to the right. This is the Italics button. Press the CTRL and I keys on your keyboard at the same time to enable italics in Windows. [1] X Research source In MacOS, you can also enable italics by pressing the COMMAND (also called the “Open Apple”) and I keys on your keyboard at the same time. [2] X Research source [3] X Research source
To italicize selected text, either click the Italics button or use the appropriate italics keystroke command. The selected text will be italicized, and the highlighting around the text will disappear. To italicize as you type, either click the Italics button or use the appropriate italics keystroke command. Begin typing. As you type, your text will be displayed in italics. To turn off italics, click the Italics button or use the appropriate keystroke command again. Your text will no longer appear in italics.
You can place the tag in front of text you’ve already typed or type the tag and then type text you want to italicize.
If you do not place a close italics tag after the text you wish to italicize, all the text following the italics tag will be italicized. A number of websites allow you to enable HTML to support bolded, italicized, and underlined text. They may or may not support other HTML features, however. [4] X Research source
Specify the type of document with the “\documentclass” command, with the type of document specified in braces. For an article, the command would read “\documentclass {article}”. (Do not include the quotation marks; they are used here to set off the example. ) Specify where the text portion begins with the command “\begin {document}”.
You can nest several formatting commands, such as having a large block of italicized text with a portion within it in boldface. If you do nest commands, be sure to use as many close braces as you do open braces to ensure that the text is formatted the way you want.
Paired single quotes can be distinguished from double quotes by the greater amount of space between them. If your text editor has a “smart quotes” feature, you may need to turn it off for Wikipedia’s text editor to recognize the single quotes as formatting signals. If you have a hyperlink that includes italicized text, the italics flags must be outside the hyperlink bracket indicators if all the hyperlink text is to be italicized. If only part of the hyperlink text is to be italicized, you may place the italics flags around only the text to be italicized. [7] X Research source
The Latin words for the genus and species of an organism are also italicized, as in Homo sapiens.
Physical constants, such as c for the speed of light, and variables in algebra, as in “ n = 2,” are also rendered in italics. [8] X Research source
When an item in a block quote would be italicized, and the rest of the block quote is already in italics, the item is commonly rendered in normal text to set it off from the block quote. Large blocks of italicized text can be hard to read on some computer screens. In such cases, you may want to render block quotes in a different font than the surrounding text. [10] X Research source
Trains (The Golden State Limited), but not the names of individual cars. Ships, either military or passenger vessels (USS Lexington, Queen Elizabeth II). Aircraft names or nicknames not based on construction or performance characteristics (Memphis Belle or Cutter’s Goose from the TV show Tales of the Gold Monkey, but not the Batplane). Spacecraft, either real or fictional (the Space Shuttle Challenger, the starship Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon). Space missions, such as Apollo 11, are not italicized.
Books (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), except for the titles of religious books such as the Bible or the Koran. Titles of chapters, sections, and short stories within anthologies are enclosed in double quotes. Magazines (Collier’s, Reader’s Digest). Titles of articles (“I Am Joe’s Kidney”) are enclosed in double quotes. Newspapers (USA Today, The Wall Street Journal). Plays (Romeo and Juliet, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Court cases (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka). Television and radio programs (Star Trek, The Shadow). Titles of episodes (“Amok Time,” “Temple Bells of Neban”) are enclosed in double quotes. Record albums (Mandatory Fun, Red). Titles of album tracks (“Word Crimes,” “I Knew You Were Trouble”) are enclosed in double quotes. Artwork (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper). Punctuation marks that are part of the title are italicized with the rest of the title. [11] X Research source
