Scientific names of organisms in italics? Not always

Scientific names of organisms in italics? Not always Written by Yateendra Joshi

It is standard to print the names of organisms in italics, as in Oryza sativa for rice and Escherichia coli for the most common species of bacteria in the human gut.

Italics are so used for differentiation: printed in italics, the names appear different from other text that surrounds them, enough to catch the reader’s attention but not to clamour for it.

However, there are other categories of text that have equal claim on italics: titles of books and journals, for example. And the typographer or the designer may well employ italics for setting figure captions, for headings, and for quotations, to name a few legitimate and common uses. And this is where you need to ignore the convention that scientific names are always in italics: if the text that surrounds such names is going to be in italics, print the names in normal (or upright or roman) font, not in italics; if you do, the names can no longer be differentiated—and the whole point of printing them in italics is lost.

["Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.]