Should i italicize foreign words

Switching to italics for the occasional word or phrase borrowed from another language—and not listed in a standard English-language dictionary—can be helpful to readers. This strategy works well for literary studies and history and the like—or for anything that requires straightforward, unambiguous prose.

And that can mean encountering unfamiliar words and words from another language or culture. The problem with using italics for non-English words in fiction is that italics will draw attention to those words in a way that can make them seem mannered or inauthentic.

Ernest Hemingway or his editor understood this a long time ago. Hemingway uses his novel to show off his own recently acquired local knowledge, especially once we get to Spain for the running of the bulls.

One man was badly cogido. Modern Library ed. Italics would have taken these two words out of the ordinary, conversational register of the rest of the dialogue, as if the speakers were emphasizing them in some way. All of these are now listed in Merriam-Webster either in the free dictionary or the unabridged. The result is that the French terms feel less authentic, or more self-consciously French, than the Spanish. Writers working today have the same choices available to them that Hemingway did, but many still default to italics for non-English words—or accept the italics imposed by their editors or publishers.

He was a puny young man who ate more than both his brothers combined. These italics read as emphatic, which is a reasonable assumption for a character who is supposed to be shouting.

Her gown, a cheongsam made of midnight blue silk with midlength sleeves, has been expertly tailored to fit her age and status. A bracelet carved from a single piece of good jade hangs from her wrist.

The thump of it when it hits the table edge is comforting and familiar. You are one would hope not an ethnographer who treats humans and human cultures as though we are inhuman curios and collectibles. As much as true cultural purity is a myth, and humans have been interlocking and influencing each other for many thousands of years, italicization persists in a way that attaches itself to such myths of purity. I cooked nasi goreng. Jesus Christ. Italicization is too often used to bolster a sense of superiority when it comes to the unitalicized, and to reinforce the thick patina of whiteness or other cultural dominance.

This is too often the case for English, even, for instance, in various countries where English is an official language and a majority of people are Black or Asian Nigeria, Singapore, et al. Why on earth should we English speakers of myriad origins and life circumstances be expected to other ourselves?

But there are just some things that only Tagalog words can express and so I use Tagalog in those instances. Though Sinhala is my mother tongue, I have chosen to write in the English language, thereby addressing a primarily English-speaking audience, one less familiar or entirely unfamiliar with Sinhala.

When I use a Sinhala word, it is to convey the fact that the speaker is using that language or because there is no word that I could find to translate the concept into the English.

That can pull readers out of the narrative too. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ms.