How to mark italics in the text (not in the footnote).

Question

I can use \it to put words in italics like this in a footnote. I can't get it to work in the actual text, though. How do I do that? After all, there are times when italics are appropriate.

Steve

Answer 1

You can mark text as italics in any place by surrounding it with \it ...\it*. 

\it ...\it* is an example of character-level markup (like a character style in MS Word or other text editor). These always need to be opened and closed. In footnotes, you may get away with not closing it because it is followed by the next character markup like \ft or \fr, but in normal text it does need a closing marker, or else the italics continue till the end of the paragraph.

A note about spacing: the space after the \it marker is part of the marker, so in order to have a space before the markup, there should be a space before the marker. The space after the \it* marker is not part of the marker (i.e. it is formatted as a real space), so there doesn't need to be a space before \it. This allows you to have \it* marker before punctuation. For example:

Markup: \p Here is a properly formatted \it keyword\it*.

Result: Here is a properly formatted keyword.

Markup: \p Here is a wrongly formatted\it keyword \it*.

Result: Here is a wrongly formattedkeyword .

Another note: \it ... \it* indicates a specific formatting; it doesn't tell anything about the function of the text in italics. In general, it is encouraged not to use formatting markers, but functional markers instead. For example, the keyword could be a transliterated word (from Greek, English etc.), in which case you use \tl ...\tl*; or a Bible book name, in which case you use \bk ...\bk*. The available markers are listed in this section of the USFM guide: https://ubsicap.github.io/usfm/characters/index.html#. That being said, there are cases where no suitable functional marker is available, so direct formatting is the only option.

Paulus

Answer 2

To put words in italics in the actual text, enter \it before the word(s) you want italicized, and enter \it* immediately after the word(s).

Example (showing how to italicize "actual text"):
The \it actual text\it* of this verse in the Hebrew says..."

* Note the space before and after the opening marker (\it) and the lack of space before the closing marker (\it*).

In order to see the italicized text, you must do both of the following:

1. Save the text (Click the Save all icon on the toolbar <OR> While holding down the Ctrl key, press S)
2. Change the view to something other than Unformatted.
   (Click the tab menu icon in your project, then from the View menu, select one of the following: Preview, Basic, Formatted, or Standard).

Answer 3

Could you clarify what you mean by "can't get it to work"? Is it failing completely? Does it do something strange? Are the markers red?

If you are using the \it inside of another character style (like \wj...\wj*) then it must be nested to work correctly. This involves adding a +    \+it...\+it*. 

Does the project have a custom.sty that changes the style?

According to the USFM standard: Note: The use of formatting oriented character markup is strongly discouraged. Please search for the appropriate USFM element to markup content, wherever possible.

If you are using the italics for emphasis then \em...\em* is the more correct marker.

Answer 4

In reply to Phil's message, I couldn't put the \it marker into the text at all. That is, I would type the [backslash] and the letters 'i' and 't', but could go no further with the popup dialog. It was as if the marker was not valid.

To answer Paulus's and Dan's solution, yes, that is what I was trying to do. I was trying to use the \it marker, but I could not get past the popup dialog box.

Since posting the question, I discovered that USFM was set to version 2 for the project. I set it to version 3. Paratext gave me a message that it was converting books for USFM 3.

I don't know if that did any thing to solve this problem. But in any case, I can't get it *not* to work now. That is, it's working fine now. I even changed the project back to USFM 2, tested it, and still saw it work. In software development lingo, I can't reproduce the bug.

Phil's comment that \em...\em* is the better marker is noted.

Comments

Just a reminder that pressing the Enter key will display the popup of paragraph type markers. Pressing the \ will display the popup of the character style markers. With either type of popup if you type a code that "doesn't exist" and then press the space bar it will still add that marker.

---

Well...that would explain why I could never get some USMF codes I wanted when I wanted them. I didn't know that I had to hit \ for one and Enter for the other.

For what it's worth, when Paratext had a survey some months ago, I ranked removing USFM codes at five stars. Now, I remember decades ago that people liked codes like USFM with Word Perfect and they lamented their loss with MS Word. No offense to them or USFM lovers, but I would be quite glad to see USFM go. This experience only strengthens the desire to remove them and use styles like other word processors do. Keyboard shortcuts such as [CTRL]+[I] and [CTRL]+[B] have been hardwired into my fingers for decades, and the lack of them here (and in FLEx) has always sent jolt through my nerves when they don't work.

---

Steve, you can work in Formatted view - this hides the markers and allows you choose styles from the dropdown. Does that meet your need? You don't get the Ctrl+B, but you can select text and then use the dropdown to select the text format.