Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 42

message: Greetings.  
How should one treat text that one would want to italicize (parenthesized literal text in a foreign language) within a block of text that is already italicized (translation from that language)?  Currently I am using (a) parenthesized "scare" quotes, but I don't know whether I should (b) UN-italicize without quotes or (c) only parenthesize ... or maybe anything goes?  I was looking for a mention of this case in the MOS but didn't happen to see one.  I don't think I have a strong preference myself, right now, but it would be nice to know if there is any consensus about it.  -thanks, Onceler 00:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The usual convention is to unitalicize italicized text in an italicized block. This isn't exactly the most visually effective form of emphasis, but I've seen it used a lot and it jibes nicely with the wikisyntax for it, which is the same as ordinary italics. Deco 00:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what LaTeX's \em command does: it toggles between italics and upright for nested emphases. PizzaMargherita 14:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since asking this question, I also wondered whether there were other applications of it--good enough to warrant adding something to the WMOS--and I have not been able to think of any.  The admittedly awkward motivation for my question was that there was a word in a block quote of translated text that was ambiguous--various interpretations would serve the same purpose and some license by the translator was unavoidable.  I had included this word within the italicized block but have since moved it to a Notes section indexed via footnote.  This seems to be a more conventional way to treat such cases and I expect go this route from now on.  Thanks all for your feedback.  -regards, 21:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally, block quotes should not be italicized or quoted. The indention and spacing already serves to indicate that they are quotes. Deco 22:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I used the italics not just because this is a quote, but because it is a quote that I translated, as part of translating an entire article.  Though this does not fall under the sense of being a "foreign word" per the WMOS, there is no mention of how to treat translations, and so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.  If they are misapplied I'll remove them.  So, just to confirm: one should go without italics even for a translated quote? -thanks,  18:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question re normally italicized text in already italicized block? 

message: Have a look at the table in National Football League championships#List of Championships by Team; take note of the coloured backgrounds.  Compare to New Zealand general election, 2005#Official election results table.
Now, I know that maybe the NFL has two colours per team, but that's not the point.  Does anyone find the colouring in the NFL page hard to read?  Personally, even though I can read it fine, I find it annoying.
I don't plan on actually doing anything about this or adding a provision to the manual unless someone else wants to.  I'd just like to get opinions on it, to get a general idea of whether it is or isn't a good idea.
Note that even though the manual asks for no colour-coding, this isn't really "colour-coding" as such, because the colours aren't "codes".  Neonumbers 04:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've used colour coding in the past in situations where I thought it was really helpful, but this is simply horrifying. Just changing the background colour between teams might be okay, but changing both the text and background colour makes it look like a rainbow exploded all over the page. Deco 02:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What an unprofessional eye sore, get rid of it. You can always add a small column that just contains the colours. PizzaMargherita 13:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice.  Very nice.  I'd go as far as to remove the colouring in NFL, AFL, etc. at the top, and just link them all, the colouring there's so not needed — in fact, I'll do that now.  But the table looks way better now.  Neonumbers 10:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colouring in tables