The next step was the invention of Italic types by Aldus Manutius, of Venice, in 1501. He took for his model the handwriting of the poet Petrarch and produced a type not essentially different from the modern Italic. Originally the Italic letters were lower-case only, Roman capitals being retained. The incongruousness of this combination was, however, so evident that Italic capitals were soon designed and then the new fonts were complete. The Aldine capitals used with Italic lower-case were small, the ancestors of the small capitals of today. Aldus used the Italic type as a text letter, and such use continued frequent for a century.
Type of the Aldine Virgil, 1501 (exact size).
At the present day, except in Germany, the three forms of type have their distinct uses. Gothic, variously known as Black Letter, Old English, Priory Text, Cloister, etc., is used only for special work, particularly in ecclesiastical printing. The modern type called "gothic" is not derived from it. Roman is the general text letter. Italic has ceased to be a text letter, but serves a useful purpose for certain special uses which are to be considered at length in the following pages.
RULES FOR THE USE OF ITALIC
Italic has, in general, four uses:
- for emphasis.
- to set off a title, word, or passage from the context.
- for running titles, sub-heads, the headings of tables, and other like places where something different from the text letter seems needed for variety.
- for display purposes in commercial work.
One very important principle should always be observed in the use of italic for emphasis. Emphasis should always be used sparingly. Make the words do their work. Do not try to supplement poverty of thought and weakness of expression by italics, capitals, and other marks of emphasis. Where there is too much emphasis attempted no emphasis is secured. This fault was much more common formerly than now.
The accompanying reproduction of a page from a book printed in 1690 (place not given, but probably London) illustrates several of the faulty uses of italics common at that time. An entire paragraph is italicized (quite unnecessarily) for emphasis. All proper names and adjectives derived from them are italicized where they occur in the regular text and printed in roman where they occur in italicized passages. Note the frequent capitalization for emphasis and especially the italic capital with roman lower-case in the first line of the second paragraph. This is a frequent usage in this particular book. In this book all quotations are printed in italic without quote marks. The paper, composition, and presswork of the book are very poor. It represents English printing in its worst period.