The Italian Connection, circa 15th Century
November 3, 2009
posted by Liz
“When commercial printing first took off at the end of the 15th century, an inclined, cursive writing style was very popular, and it soon found its way into printing fonts. Credit for this goes to Manutius Aldus, who commissioned Francesco Griffo to design the first of the humanist cursive types that we now identify as italic, so-called at the time simply because it came from Italy.
Printers could set italic type more tightly than roman, which saved paper, so for both economic and stylistic reasons italics were all the rage until the mid-16th century. Then roman types made a comeback and italics were relegated to being used for emphasis, which is the principal role they play today.
Although italics are often used for stylistic contrast—in picture captions, for example—their main use is for providing emphasis and clarifying the meanings of certain typeset words. And conversely, when you want to create emphasis in a passage of italic type, switch to roman.
For those of you who remember typewriters, use italics for all that stuff you used to underline. When setting type, there is generally no need to use underlines, or underscores…”
