A question about Civil War era documents:

[hedgehog]

When passages are quoted from essays or personal letters, there is a frequent use of italics. Is this to indicate underlinings in the original written text? I don't recall writings from before or after this time period in which the original authors seem to put such emphasis on certain words or phrases.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Give a context ...

I've seen several documents with words underlined, especially personal letters, and that is typically represented as italics. You'll also see this from newspapers when speeches were printed. Reporters would write down the speech as it was being given, and they would emphasize words in the text that were emphasized by the orator when giving the speech.

On the other hand, I've seen a lot of documents used to make a point, with the author putting emphasis on parts of a quote that were not necessarily emphasized in the original. This is especially the case in books and pamplets written throughout the 19th century and up to about the 1960's from a certain type of author.

IOW ... context.

[hedgehog]

2. Thanks - your answer confirmed what I had surmised.

I have seen authors add italics to emphasize a point. You're right about the failure to assign the source of the emphasis. Generally, the only explanation is a note "emphasis in original"; suggesting that the reader should assume that the author has added the emphasis unless otherwise noted. In quotes from 19th century documents, though, there are so many italics that I've always wondered if the printers were trying to reproduce some kind of underlining found in the original. It's an odd quirk. I wonder why the letters of that era seem much more dramatic than others written before or since. Were the underlinings in 19th century documents the ancestors of the Net's emoticons?

[RoyGBiv]

3. EmPHAsis ...

Assigning emphasis to words or phrases not intended by an original author or speaker is, imo, akin to placing the emPHAsis on the wrong syllAble. IOW, it's unprofessional.

You'll see a lot of non-professionals do it without a thought, and it can be okay, and professional, *if* standards of notation are followed that make clear the emphasis was or was not in the original. Disciplined historians and others do follow such conventions. Others with more of an axe to grind often will not.

What's interesting, and frustrating, is that even when the emphasis is in the original document, one occasionally has to take care to observe that the document was often a retelling of some event or speech in which emphasis was noted that may or may not have been intended by the actors in the event or the orator giving the speech. This is notable with political speeches before the age of recording devices. The reporters themselves had political agendas, or their papers did, and certain passages would be emphasized not because the orator did so but because the writer or editor wanted the reader to take note of what was being said.

As for underlines being an early form of the smiley, I am :rofl: while thinking of this. :-) Seriously, it's a good observation. Sometimes the English language and rules of grammar don't provide all the tools we need to get across a point well enough, and we are forced to resort to such devices to help us along.