{"id":360,"date":"2018-01-23T01:44:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T01:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mckpublish.com\/?p=360"},"modified":"2020-01-26T01:46:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T01:46:08","slug":"may-we-have-a-word-about-your-usage-of-caps-bold-and-italics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/23\/may-we-have-a-word-about-your-usage-of-caps-bold-and-italics\/","title":{"rendered":"May we have a word about your usage of CAPS, Bold, and Italics?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the process of publishing books, the staff at McKinney Publishing have noticed a trend that probably needs to be discussed.\u00a0 Some of our authors get seized with a sudden desire to want to add emphasis to their words, in a way the words themselves never even imagined.\u00a0 Occasionally this is even done within a portion of the word.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tisk, tisk, says the schoolteacher of yesteryear.\u00a0 The beauty of the English language is the depth and breadth of words from which to craft the sentence and create the appropriate response from the reader. Perhaps we are falling woefully short in our wordcraft these days, awash in the sea of emoticons and acronyms.\u00a0 Perhaps we have all slid into the patterns us using bright and vivid mediums to communicate in the style of web pages or billboards, rather than using a slower, but more verbally artistic phraseology. However, consider the following:<\/div><\/div>

“I can go to school,” said the boy.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The author of this short remark, clearly intended the “can” in the sentence to have some imparted meaning.\u00a0 But what could it be?\u00a0 It could be a joyous emphasis (“I can go to school,” the boy proudly announced).\u00a0 Or perhaps the announcement was more defiant (“I can go to school,” the boy declared with defiance in his eyes.)\u00a0 Maybe, the bold was intended to be an indication that there was a slow pause in the utterance (The boy considered, hesitated, and then steeled himself in finality. “I can go to school,” he resolved.)<\/p>

I could go on.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bold words, Italics, and underlining for emphasis, are not going to necessarily communicate the same thing to the reader that they do for the writer. They are often used as a crutch instead of crafting a more full word picture with other descriptors.\u00a0 In fact, these type ‘enhancers’ were created to serve when there simply wasn’t another alternative, or to denote works of art, titles of books, etc.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps all writers will someday be obliged to use bold and italics to shape their sentences.\u00a0 However, the printing world doesn’t share that inevitable view.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When we set up the manuscripts for printing we have two options.\u00a0 One option is to use “photo ready” pages.\u00a0 This is where the pages are simply converted to an image, and the image is printed on each page.\u00a0 This allow printers to use the author’s own word processing document (Word, Pages, etc), and preserves the Author’s own use of bold, italics, etc. Many self-publishers seem to use this method, since it is the cheapest and easiest way.\u00a0 However, the sad fact is that when we tested out pages that were printed using “photo-ready” techniques vs using professional formatting, everyone who viewed the proof copies immediately stated they strongly preferred the professional formatted works.\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Professionally formatted works nearly universally will remove all the bold and italics from word-processing documents by default.\u00a0 The paragraphs are shaped, margins set, fonts chosen and type-face set.\u00a0 Once this is all completed, the words that are intended to be set apart for special emphasis by bold or italics are selected by hand and adjusted to have their respective emphasis. Certainly, this is allowed, and may even be an invaluable addition to a work. However, each bold word will require time (and cost) to add that emphasis, and will introduce another chance for error in the processing.<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, all things considered, when creating your own manuscript for submission, take a good hard look at all your bold and italic words.\u00a0 Ask yourself whether those are needed to help the reader understand the meaning.\u00a0 Then consider if perhaps adding an adjective or clause would do the same thing, even perhaps more clearly. You will end up with a work that is more polished in the end, and save yourself some considerable cost and hassle with the final printed copy.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the process of publishing books, the staff at McKinney Publishing have noticed a trend that probably needs to be discussed.\u00a0 Some of our authors get seized with a sudden desire to want to add emphasis to their words, in a way the words themselves never even imagined.\u00a0 Occasionally this is even done within… Read More »May we have a word about your usage of CAPS, Bold, and Italics?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckpublish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}