Grammar in an online world…

Today’s thought which I have considered for some time:

If, as rules of grammar tell us, you’s supposed to underline titles of books, and, as rules of usability tell us, you’re not supposed to underline anything that isn’t a link, how do you properly represent book titles in an online environment (when they don’t link to an Amazon.com entry)?

I have opted to use quote marks and/or italics. But somehow, it just doesn’t seem right.

Andrew tells me that italics are the way to go:

The history of italics vs. underlining is thus. Typesetters always italicized book titles — after all, there were only roman and italicized characters to set, no batch of underlined characters existed. But then came the typewriter, which had no keys for italics, so people were forced to hand-underline book titles. People began to assume that underlining was how it had always been.

Today, fortunately for writing on the web, italicizing is regaining its rightful place!