Italics or underlining?
I prefer italics in legal writing. Not only in citations, but in all places where you might otherwise underline--for emphasis, for headings. I consider underlining to be an outdated typographic convention necessitated by typewriters.
The Bluebook perpetuates underlining in citations by giving all examples of citations in practitioner documents with underlining, not italics. Many lawyers use underlining instead of italics for citations. And some legal-writing teachers tell their students to use underlining instead of italics for citations.
Why?
What are the advantages of underlining over italics for legal citations? Care to comment?
Wayne Schiess
Website | Seminars | Articles | Books: Preparing Legal Documents Nonlawyers Can Read and Understand | Better Legal Writing | Writing for the Legal Audience | The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide
The Bluebook perpetuates underlining in citations by giving all examples of citations in practitioner documents with underlining, not italics. Many lawyers use underlining instead of italics for citations. And some legal-writing teachers tell their students to use underlining instead of italics for citations.
Why?
What are the advantages of underlining over italics for legal citations? Care to comment?
Wayne Schiess
Website | Seminars | Articles | Books: Preparing Legal Documents Nonlawyers Can Read and Understand | Better Legal Writing | Writing for the Legal Audience | The Legal Memo: A Basic Guide
I think it does make sense for the Bluebook to underline in its examples. It's easier for students to see where an underline stops than to see the difference between an italicized period and a non-italicized period.
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Wayne, I think I've commented about this to you via email a year or two ago, but the convention of underlining needs to go. Now that almost everything is published to the internet, underlining represents a hyperlink and so it can cause confusion to the reader who may try to click on the text (even PDF's can have hyperlinks).
Plain and simple, underlining needs to go.
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I'm bucking the tradition of underlining citations in my jurisdiction (Kauai, Hawaii). I prefer italics for citations and underling for those relatively rare "emphasis added" moments.
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Richard is correct about the hyperlink; however, very little of my writing gets to html. Also, italics is more elegant.
However, there is no question that underlined cites within the body of the text are easier to spot when visually scanning a page. For my eye, underlining provides significantly more visual emphasis than italics --perhaps that's why Berners-Lee (or whoever) designated underlining as the html link signal.
For headings, most typographers I've come across recommend a bold sans-serif, not italics.
I like italics for mild emphasis.
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I prefer italics for all but title headings. The title just below a caption in a pleading or similar document looks wrong in italics. Underlining or Roman both work (though, I prefer underlining).
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I agree with Carolyn that it makes it vastly easier in the Bluebook to quickly see what is and is not set in a different type. And I agree with Mr. Foster's post as well. In Virginia we have to use 14 pt. Arial, Verdana, or Courier in briefs to our Supreme Court, and emphasis is difficult to denote with italics.
Wayne says:
Wow. And does that 14 pt Arial, Verdana, or Courier (yuck) have to be double spaced?
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Yes, it most certainly does! I'd love to see us go Federal and start using word or character counts, but there seems to be a bias in favor of large type. Whether that's an eye issue for some people I don't know. But if it's such a problem, I would think they could to require electronic copies of briefs and mandate paragraph numbering like some jurisdictions do in their opinions.
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Underlining is difficult to read, old-fashioned, and unnecessary. Italics is better for emphasizing a word or phrase in a sentence. If you can't spot italics in the text, use bold. Another suggestion if you want to be able to find your citations easily--put them in footnotes.
For headings, make your main headings two points larger and bold. The next level of headings should be just bold. The third level can be bold italics, and the fourth, if you need it (God forbid!), can be italics without bold.
I agree with Richard. Underlining needs to go.
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You give the Bluebook too much credit. In a world where many firms are still shaking off Wordperfect because they don't want to retrain staff, old habits just die hard.
The crudeness of underlining is its strength. It jumps off the page. If you even glance at a page, your eye is drawn to underlining. You can't miss it. Italics? Perfect for citations, where you'd really like the words to fade into the background.
Using italics for emphasis works only because italics are different than the body text -- not because they are in any way emphatic. (I see the point of the commenters above who suggest bold instead of, or perhaps in addition to, italics. I'm curious to hear your view.)
Depending on the typographic rules of your court and the function of your brief, sometimes underlining works better.
As for hyperlinks, they were traditionally both blue and underlined, but text-heavy publications who care about readability (New York Times, for example) now drop the underlining and just set them off with the color blue.
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I'm with you--italics, plain and simple. I don't think I've ever used underlining in a brief, except in a quotation. I particularly dislike underlined case citations, which make a document look primitive no matter how good the work product.
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Is there anything wrong with just bolding case names (not the remainder of the citation)? It does not seem as distracting as underlining when there are a number of cites on a page, and it is much easier to pick out when a reader is looking for a case cite.
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My mileage differs regarding the relative distractingness of the two practices; regardless, better to avoid any unnecessary distraction. If Locating a citation on the page a second faster is that important—why?—consider Bryan Garner's recommended citation placement in a footnote.
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Underlining is, as you say, a vestige of the era of typewriters. More specifically, it was meant to signal the typesetter at the printing press to switch to an oblique font, which is italics. So they do literally mean the same thing, it's just that final manuscripts would have underlines, while the prints from a letterpress would use italics.
Wayne says:
Agreed. But which should a lawyer use in a document created with Word and printed on a desktop printer?
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I agree--when a serif font is being used. When a sans serif font is employed, though, I feel less certain. In most sans serif type families, italics aren't "real" italics--they are Roman letters angled slightly to the right. These italics subtract from the crisp, clean, more-white-space feeling that one otherwise might get from a sans serif page. And yes, sometimes it's hard to recognize when a sans serif character is italicized and when not. Some firms and courts use italics for footnotes (usually Garner-style citation footnotes), in 10 or 11 points. In that situation, I think underlined citations work as well as, and probably better than, italicized citations. I think that bolded cites, mentioned by another commenter, are distracting--they shout and keep the eye from paying sufficient attention to the rest of the text. Bolding in such situations started, I think, with electric typewriters. I did it then, too. But I think it's unnecessary now.
I'm currently reading a book about Supreme Court justices (sale purchase from Amazon), written by a practicing lawyer who italicizes cites and for emphasis, but also underlines, with thick black rules, for added emphasis. You see why I don't name book or author. It is the most distracting method of emphasizing I have ever seen. It's an example, I think, of how members of our profession tend to be "belt and suspender" writers. If one is good, two are better--and bargain, sell, grant, and convey is sublime.
An earlier comment noted the current requirement of the Supreme Ct. of Virginia that briefs be 14-pt. in specified fonts, double-spaced. That court's opinions continue to be issued in double-spaced Courier, with citations underlined. I believe the Court's Courier is 12, not 14-pt.
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