Re: [Docutils-users] Book titles

[David G. <go...@py...>]

David Abrahams wrote:
> I'm writing a document with ReST, and I need to insert the titles of
> several books.  Technically, book titles are supposed to be
> underlined.

According to whom?  *The Chicago Manual of Style*, which I use as my
typographical bible, says:

    Titles and subtitles of published books, ... are set in italics
    when they are mentioned in the text or notes.

    (14th edition, section 7.133)

I looked up every reference to underlines, and they are exclusively used to
indicate italics to the typesetter (early typewriters typically didn't have
italic functionality ;).

If you want to indicate "book title" separately from "emphasis", which is
perfectly valid, that's a different question.  Has to do with interpreted
text.  There's already a related to-do list entry:

  Perhaps the default implicit role for interpreted text could be
  "title", as in, "title of a book".  It'd be a text-only reference,
  no hyperlink.  Idea from Aahz' 2002-05-09 Doc-SIG post.

> What's the appropriate ReST representation?

Ain't none, sorry.  For a rationale, see
<http://docutils.sf.net/spec/rst/problems.html#underlining>.

-- 
David Goodger  <go...@py...>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/