The discussion revolves around the appropriate use of italic versus upright roman subscripts in scientific notation, particularly in the context of physical quantities. Participants explore the conventions and rules surrounding the representation of subscripts in various contexts, including academic publications.
Participants express differing views on the rules for italicization and the definitions of roman versus italic fonts. No consensus is reached on the best practices for notation, as multiple competing views remain.
Some limitations include the lack of clarity on specific conventions across different fields or publications, and the potential for varying interpretations of what constitutes an abbreviation versus a symbol for a physical quantity.
I'm having trouble deciphering the difference here between when roman or italic is appropriate.Name reference: The quantity has a subscripted or superscripted single letter, a number of letters, or an entire word, to specify what concept or entity they refer to, and tend to be written in upright roman typeface rather than italic while the quantity is in italic. For instanceEk or Ekinetic is usually used to denote kinetic energy and Ep or Epotential is usually used to denote potential energy.
Quantity reference: The quantity has a subscripted or superscripted single letter, a number of letters, or an entire word, to specify what measurement/s they refer to, and tend to be written in italic rather than upright roman typeface while the quantity is also in italic. For example cp or cisobaric is heat capacity at constant pressure.
Note the difference in the style of the subscripts: k and p are abbreviations of the words kinetic and potential, whereas p (italic) is the symbol for the physical quantity pressure rather than an abbreviation of the word "pressure".
From Wikipedia:zoobyshoe said:Notice, Ashiataka, that the choice is between upright or italic, not Roman or italic. Roman seems to be the conventional font, and it may either remain upright or be italicized.
In Latin-script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic.
I stand corrected. I thought Roman was a font that could be left upright, italicized, bolded, or underlined like any font.DrClaude said:From Wikipedia:
Yes, Roman, like any text, can be italicized on a computer. That's not the same as an Italic font, which can similarly be modified into an upright Italic font (one of the options when you need to italicize something in the middle of a text that's already italicized).zoobyshoe said:I stand corrected. I thought Roman was a font that could be left upright, italicized, bolded, or underlined like any font.
I guess my sense of it came completely from internet usage, and I never ran across the history.BobG said:Yes, Roman, like any text, can be italicized on a computer. That's not the same as an Italic font, which can similarly be modified into an upright Italic font (one of the options when you need to italicize something in the middle of a text that's already italicized).
With computers and tons of fonts, you can italicize anything with that meaning "slanted letters" for a lot of the fonts.
In the old days of typesetting, italics was its own font and still is, even if not as significant anymore in normal text. Who the heck wants to actually change fonts all the time when using slanted letters is simpler and almost as effective.
Oh, the right side! I never had any luck with this because I was always blocking up the left side! My reasoning was that friction should prevent the bottom of the letters from moving while the tops fell to the right.Back in the days I used a typewriter, I just plain hated italicized text in a paper. I had to insert two blocks of wood, just the write size, under the two right feet of the typewriter in order to get just the right slant for the italicized letters.