Copy Editors of Dune

[beamjockey]

As is his habit, lsanderson has today rounded up links to film reviews in the New York Times.

One of these is If Only Orson Welles Had Starred: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune,’ From Frank Pavich

It's a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky's effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to film Frank Herbert's epic science fiction novel in the 1970s. (Other directors have since brought Dune to the screen, in a 1984 feature film and a 2000 TV miniseries.)

Sounds interesting. But I started wondering about the title. How do you write it?

There are rules for writing the titles of movies. But this movie title has a movie title inside of it.

In its headline, the Times encloses the title in single quotes:

‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’

In the body of the story, the Times encloses the title in double quotes:

"Jodorowsky’s Dune"

(In fact, they employ curly-quotes, but for the moment, let's not go there.)

The W. Skeffington Higgins stylebook, the one inside my head (a patchwork of high-school rules and random ideas from elsewhere), dictates that, where possible, film titles ought to be italicized:

Jodorowsky’s Dune

But wait-- if the film title itself contains a film title, shouldn't the title-within-a-title be emphasized somehow?

All-capitalized?

Jodorowsky’s DUNE

Emboldened?

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Embiggened?

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Superscripted?

Jodorowsky’s ^Dune

I often see, and often use, a convention like this: When something italicized hits a word that would itself normally be italicized, it toggles the italicization "off" and reverts to normal roman type-- resuming the italicization afterward. In this case such a convention would lead to:

Jodorowsky’s Dune

HTML has an "emphasis" tag that is supposed to take care of this sort of thing: enclosing text between <em> and </em> toggles the italicization on and off, and I believe these can be nested. Let's try:

Jodorowsky’s Dune

No, I guess the second <em> does not cancel the effect of the first <em>; neither does it have any discernible effect on the text it encloses.

In sending e-mail, my habits were formed on the unreliable Net of the Eighties. I generally do not trust that italics crafted in my mail client's editor will be displayed correctly when my text arrives at my correspondent's screen. Following Postel's Robustness Principle,† I fall back on conventions that I am sure will get through, even to someone who can only receive 7-bit ASCII. So if you get e-mail from me, any reference to a book or movie title will be enclosed in asterisks:

*Jodorowsky’s Dune*

Though in the present case, perhaps I should enclose the title-within-a-title in double asterisks to distinguish it:

*Jodorowsky’s **Dune***

All right, NOW I'm getting silly.




† Postel's Robustness Principle: "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

Comments

[whl.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you are sticking to a balanced presentation in that last notation.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Whatever html code you're using for that link to "links to film reviews in the New York Times." is just reflecting back to the current page.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. Fixed now, I think.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yep!

Also, I saw good Top Quark news yesterday. Congrats to you and anyone you work with for whatever involvement you had with that.

[scarfman]

NOW I'm getting silly

Now you are? I'd've said that was passed at superscript.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Can't really argue.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Jodorowsky's^Dune?

To the Dune, Alice!

[brooksmoses]

Obviously this is why typographers make double-italicized fonts that are twice as slanted as regular fonts.

[planettom.livejournal.com]

Apparently the HTML marquee command only works in a LiveJournal main post, not a comment.

See example here.

Also, apparently no current browser supports the old HTML blink command, darn it!