I JUST WANT TO EMPHASIZE THIS

I love to use italics. I remember reading a scene in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Emily series in which the 24 year old Emily opens a letter she wrote to herself when she was 14 and is slightly ashamed at the superflous use of italics that she tended to when she was younger. I scoff at such things. I will use italics until the day I die and never be ashamed of their overuse: italics are awesome.


Caps lock has become the internet’s way of SHOUTING AT ONE ANOTHER. On the less popular (at the moment) social media website, Google+, users can emphasize whatever they need to, because Google+ supports the use of italics and the like. On facebook, the only way to tell the world how much you really love ice cream from Ivanna Cone IS TO SHOUT ABOUT IT.


When we speak, it’s easy to tell what is emphasized just by listening to the speaker. There isn’t always a way to emphasize what you need to online, and a sentence like “I wasn’t mad at you” could be taken the wrong way without the ability to underline, italicize, or embolden things.


“I wasn’t mad at you” could mean anything when conveyed online without the use of formatting. Most probably, it would mean that the person who typed it was not angry with the person who is meant to read it. However, if the one recieving the message had heard it instead, they may have taken something very different away from the conversation.

What if the sender wasn’t angry, but only annoyed (“I wasn’t mad at you”)? Or perhaps the sender was vexed with someone else (“I wasn’t mad at you”). Maybe the recipient of the message doesn’t believe the sender (“I wasn’t mad at you”)!


CAPS LOCK is my answer to formatting when italics are unavailable. However, there are several other ways that people use to set apart those words that they want to emphasize. Some people put *asterisks* around a word to draw a reader’s eye. Others use _an underscore_ to set phrases apart. I have seen people use >greater than< and >less than< symbols, or the occasional use of s p a c e s to show what the reader should pay attention to.


Dear Everything Online that Does Not Yet Have a Formatting Option,
Please add formatting to your website/messaging service/whatever. The users of your product are dying to make themselves better understood.
Sincerely,
TIRED OF SHOUTING in Boulder CO