Italics in electronic documents

Some e-mail systems do not allow formatting such as italics. Others allow you to set your mail to compose and view in rich text (with all formatting), HTML (Web formatting), or plain text (no formatting).

A common convention to indicate words that should be italicized in e-mail is to precede and follow the words with underscore marks or asterisks. Sentence punctuation should follow the coding.

Example sentence: I am planning to write my senior thesis on _Memoirs of a Geisha_.

Example sentence: I am planning to write my senior thesis on *Memoirs of a Geisha*.

In less formal e-mail messages, normally italicized words aren’t marked at all.

Example sentence: I finally finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha – what a story!

Exercise: Italics