Bold

Bold is for em­pha­sis. That is, the important stuff. If you are emphasizing more than 10% of the page, none of it is important. If you want darker print, use a darker font or change the toner in the printer. Come to think of it, if you dont' bold everything, the toner would last longer.

Italics

Italics is for names. There are lists of specific kinds of  names that should be in italics, but italics is not for emphasis, it is for names.

Underline

If you are using a pen, you underline for emphasis. My Grandma enjoys caligraphy. She could italisize a single word in a sentance. She wouldn't, she would underline. In the web world, underlines are for hyperlinks. Thjs is what it says at Grammar Girl.

A bonus on underlines. Microsoft Office will automatically underline and make active any web address. This leads to print out with underlines that look funny. My daddy says that if you right click on a link you do not want to be a clickable link (like any link that is not going to be on a screen) you can remove the hyperlink.

Small Type and Large Type

Daddy says that one day, he was converting a document from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word. He discovered that for many years someone who should have known better used subscript for fine print instead of a small type face. That is BAD! BAD! BAD!

In a bibliography, you should quotation mark, underline, and italisize like the example.

Typography for Lawyers. Grandpa was a lawyer but he let someone else type stuff for him.

Grammar Girl

It may seem strange for a computer geek to like fountain pens, but I do. I started using a fountain pen about 15 years ago. For general writing, I like the look of the words on the page. I like the feel of the pen on paper. I especially like blue-black ink on white paper. The outline for this page was done on paper with a fountain pen. I do get some strange looks when I am at a technical conference taking notes with a fountain pen.

In case you have not guessed, I like green. My green marble fountain pen loaded with green ink. In a world of black roller ball or "Bic" blue, the beautiful colors of ink available to a fountain pen user are wonderful.

Many people say that a fountain pen slows down your writing, making you think about the words. I find that it slows my thinking down to a speed my hand can capture. This is something I am trying to overcome, thinking faster than I can write or type.

A quality pen is instantly noticeable in a world of 99 cent a dozen pens with the name of a drug on it.