twisty on 1/6/2008 at 02:14
My father has written a book about the Australian education system that contains large numbers of quotes of varying lengths -- some that go on for several pages -- and his commentary on them. The quotes themselves were extracted from books and newspaper articles (some very old) via Omnipage; and whilst the program performed fairly well, the variation in fonts, formatting, indenting and such that has made its way into my father's book is almost Byzantine in complexity. With the knowledge that editing a book spanning over 500 pages is beyond the old boy's word skills, I offered to help and have been steadily ploughing through the book, when I have had time to do so for, over the past two months.
I have finally managed to get down to the last 80 pages and have reduced the total amount of Styles to 12 in total. One stumbling block that I have come across though is that I have used italics and indentation for the quotes and a similar style for nested quotes. The problem that arises here of course is that where the original text itself contained italicised text, the version that has made its way into Dad's book doesn't show this as the entire quote block is italicised. Is there a standard formatting style that Editors use for this type of thing?
Kolya on 1/6/2008 at 03:09
I don't know if there's a standard for that situation but I suggest you make the originally italicised text regular.
Tonamel on 1/6/2008 at 03:17
Yep, that's the way I generally see it done.
And this is yet another reminder that I need to pick up "The Elements of Typographic Style."
Chade on 1/6/2008 at 03:52
AFAIK the standard is just to use regular text.
On the other hand, (
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Type-Layout-Communicating-Making-Pretty/dp/1875750223) Colin Wheildon has done some tests which suggest that reading long blocks of italicized text is almost as easy as reading long blocks of normal text. In addition, wikipedia suggests that there is no authoritative guideline on block quote typeface, and says it is primarily an aesthetic concern.
As you have quotes spanning several pages, the indentation of the quote from the surrounding text might not be enough (the readers eye will at times be a long way from the surrounding text, and there might not be any surrounding text on the current page). So a different typeface for block quotes could be a good idea. One alternative to using italics is to use a smaller font.
If you do decide to use italics for the quotes, some people indicate italicized italics using regular font. Personally this just confused me, however ...
twisty on 1/6/2008 at 07:28
I've decided to go with the suggestion of using regular text.
Whichever publisher he finally gets will have their own style set but at least the work that I have done will make it easier for them to clearly see which parts are which.
