Italics, Underline and Bold

[Bob Brooks]

I thought that these features would have been a part of the new site. I must assume, however, that this stuff must not be so easy to implement.

Any comments about this from Chowhounds who are also knowledgeable about progamming?

[Alcachofa]

I disagree with hatless. Hatless's examples given are extreme and obvious. When I post on Chowhound, I am actually *publishing* my opinions. So, as inane as they sometimes are, yes I would like correct typography. Maybe I've read _The New Yorker_ for too long.

I can kind of see the arguments against bold and underlining, but for a food site, and all the non-English words, italics is essential.

"It was discussed *con brio*."

I'm sorry, but that does not work AT ALL. That actually was not a food-based example, but it is something I used in a post recently. WE NEED ITALICS!

[RShea78]

I disagree with italics and wish all sites pulled the ability to use it. It looks fine in print but I have yet to find a display to do italics any justice. I put italics up there with the Old English font, that needs taken up a few font sizes to be legible.

[hatless]

We're exchanging chow tips here, not writing for the New Yorker. Italicizing "pho dac biet" and "khoresht e-fessenjan" illuminates nothing in the context of a chow tip.

[David Ford]

Here are the conventions that I have used when no style options are available:

To _underline_ something, bracket the word or phrase with underscore characters.

To *italicize* something, bracket the word or phrase with asterisk characters.

Finally, to BOLD something, use all capitals. Use this one judiciously, however, since it is generally accepted that to post in all capitals is likened to SHOUTING, and can be quite offensive to many regular users.

I hope this helps!

[carswell]

>>Here are the conventions that I have used when no style options are available:

>>To _underline_ something, bracket the word or phrase with underscore characters.

>>To *italicize* something, bracket the word or phrase with asterisk characters.

>>Finally, to BOLD something, use all capitals. Use this one judiciously, however, since it is generally accepted that to post in all capitals is likened to SHOUTING, and can be quite offensive to many regular users.<<

Workarounds. All un-English, all ugly and all inferior to the real things.

[carswell]

They were one of the first things I asked for. "Why can't we use boldface and italics in our posts? Italics are almost a necessity for those of us who live in and write about places where English is not the first language and who therefore use 'foreign' words in our posts."
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/...

I also started a thread — apparently now deleted — to test whether HTML formatting tags would work. (They don't.

)

Besides foreign words, italics are useful for clearly indicating the titles of books, magazines, newspapers and films. Correctly used, bold and underline can do much to make long posts more readable and the information they contain quickly accessible. Scanning the notes from a big tasting for a specific wine is far easier and faster when the wine names are bolded. Ditto when looking for a restaurant name in one of those endless "how I spent my summer vacation" posts.

I find the above posts astounding. Italics, underline and bold would make this site better.

[pinstripeprincess]

i personally have enough issues with unnecessary use of completely capitalized words that i'm glad we don't have more ways to put any greater emphasis.

it may also open up the doors to greater sarcasm and nastiness on the boards.

[sturm]

IMO it's easy to implement, but I also prefer plain text.

[eve]

I never need these options and prefer they weren't available--they can be overused/abused by some.

[Chris VR]

Agreed, I can't think of a case where I felt a post absolutely needed Italics, Bold or especially underline (which is easily confused with a URL.)

[Bob Martinez]

"I never need these options and prefer they weren't available--they can be overused/abused by some."

You could say the same about using those options in MS Word. As I wrote on the thread about a private messaging system, the fact that a technology can be abused is not an automatic argument against implementing it.