double italics

[ruthrozen]

We are confused by two different examples. First is Rule II.10.b "Italicize separately the names of ships, pictures, book titles, publication, and the like, and items italicized for different reasons." See this sentence:
The Waldorf, The Plaza, and The Americana are famous New York hotels.
.,! .,w∙ldorf1 .,! .,pl∙-
z∙1 & .,! .,∙m]ic∙n∙ >e
f∙m\s ,new ,york hotels4

Second is in the Instruction Manual, page 15-4, 15.1d "Unemphasized connecting words." See this sentence:
The Thrush, Phoebe, Vireo, Blue Jay and Chickadee are birds of the northern forest.
,! ..,?ru%1 ,phoebe1 ,vireo1 ,blue
.,j∙y & .,*ick∙dee >e birds (!
nor!rn =e/4

Why are names of hotels and birds treated differently? It is not a case of individual items being more than one word, because "Blue Jay is two words.
Many thanks.
--Ruth

[JanaBrailles]

Hi Ruth,
So sorry for the delay in responding to your question. I think this one must have slipped through the cracks.

Rule II.10.b refers to book titles, publications, ships, and pictures that would require some sort of emphasis in print.
For example, in a printed document, book titles are always in italics, underlined, etc., thus each separate title needs to emphasized individually.

Section 15.1d refers to names of birds. This would not require special print emphasis just because they are birds, so the list can treated as a group and double emphasis is used.

I hope this helps,
Saralyn

[ruthrozen]

Hi, Saralyn,
Thanks for the reply, but we are still confused. Hotel names are not like book titles, ships, etc. They are not typically italicized. (I checked with a professional editor.) But I know we must italicize following print, so I will not argue with the italicization in these examples. As a transcriber, I can only assume that the emphasis exists for a reason, which the print author/editor decided upon. So now I'm back to my original question: what is really the difference between these two examples?

p.s. According to English style manuals, bird names are not capitalized, but again, that's up to the print author/editor, and we braille accordingly.

Thanks again,
Ruth Rozen

[Anonymous]

Ahhh, now I think I understand the dilemma. I will need to look into this further and will get back with a more appropriate response as soon as I can.
Thanks for your patience.

Saralyn

[Anonymous]

Ruth,

Let me see if I can offer some clarification here. Rule II.10.b speaks to emphasizing names of ships, titles of books, publications and the like. Those things are emphasized because they are names.

With regard to Instruction Manual Lesson 15.1.d, the emphasis is on a series or group of words. You always see names (titles) of books, ships, etc. in a different font that the surrounding text because these things are titles. With regard to the names of birds, it would not be necessary to emphasize the bird names if they were not emphasized to begin with. This example is showing you that in such a grouping you would not need to identify (emphasize) the names individually. These are types of birds, not names (proper names) of birds ... with hotels, the emphasized words are the hotel names ...

If you are still confused, remember, you are going to always follow print. If there is no emphasis, you don't use emphasis. If there is emphasis, you need to emphasize in braille. If you are talking book titles, or proper names of ships, or whatever, you need to look and determine if such items can be emphasized using a double emphasis (for more than 3 consecutive words), or if they each need to be emphasized individually, as in book or publication titles.

I'm afraid I can't emplain it any better.

Jana

[Anonymous]

Here is Connie Risjord's (the author of the Literary Manual)response to this question:

I suspect the EBAE rule that requires names of ships, pictures, etc., to be italicized separately was written to accommodate multiple-word titles – and I think it all has to do with readability. The second example perhaps demonstrates this better than the one listing names of hotels:
Read: East Side, West Side; Little Women; and Babbit.
Notice how the reader is able to keep all of the words of the first title together. Had the double italics run all the way through to “Women” the reader would have to pay very close attention to the separating punctuation in order to get meaning from the sentence.
On the other hand, when you have a list of names, such as the birds in the manual, readability would not be an issue.

Thank You Connie.

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