Recommendations and requirements[edit]

Linguistics professor Larry Trask stated that "It is possible to write an entire word or phrase in

capital letters in order to emphasize it", but adds that "On the whole, though, it is preferable to
express emphasis, not with capital letters, but with italics."[21] Many university researchers and
academic journal editors advise not to use italics, or other approaches to emphasizing a word,
unless essential, for example the Modern Language Association "discourages the use of italics in
academic prose to emphasize or point, because they are unnecessary—most often, the
unadorned words do the job without typographic assistance".[22] Although emphasis is useful in
speech, and so has a place in informal or journalistic writing, in academic traditions it is often
suggested that italics are only used where there is a danger of misunderstanding the meaning of
the sentence, and even in that case that rewriting the sentence is preferable; in formal writing the
reader is expected to interpret and understand the text themselves, without the assumption that
the precise intended interpretation of the author is correct. Italics are principally used in academic
writing for texts that have been referenced, and for foreign language words. Similarly capitals and
underlining have particular meanings, and are rarely used in formal writing for emphasis.