[e.] A word or passage requiring great emphasis is italicized. This device should not be used to excess. The proper way to secure emphasis is to have good ideas, and to use emphatic sentence structure in expressing them.
Exercise:
- In Vanity Fair Thackeray heads one chapter How to Live Well on Nothing a Year.
- Auf wiedersehen was his parting word. He had informed me, sub rosa of course, that he was going to Bremen.
- The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac revolutionized naval warfare. How far back it seems to the days when Decatur set fire to the old Philadelphia!
- Her They say's are as plenteous as rabbits in Australia.
- A writer in the Century Magazine says the public may know better than an author what the title of his book should be. Dickens, for example, called one of his works The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
[Abbreviations]
[83a.] In ordinary writing avoid abbreviations. The following, however, are always correct: Mr., Messrs., Dr., or St. (Saint), before proper names; B. C. or A. D., when necessary to avoid confusion, after a date; and No. or $ when followed by numerals.
In ordinary writing spell out
- All titles, except those listed above.
- Names of months, states, countries.
- Christian names, unless initials are used instead.
- Names of weights and measures, except in statistics.
- Street, Avenue, Road, Railroad, Park, Fort, Mountain, Company, Brothers, Manufacturing, etc.
In ordinary writing, instead of & write and; for viz. write namely; for i. e., write that is; for e. g. write for example; for a. m. and p. m. write in the morning, this afternoon, tomorrow evening, Saturday night. Do not use etc. (et cetera) when it can be avoided.
[b.] In business correspondence, technical writing, tabulations, footnotes, and bibliographies, or wherever brevity is essential, other abbreviations may be used. Even here, short words should not be abbreviated: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Samoa, Utah, March, April, May, June, July.
Exercise: