The first rule of bold and italic fonts is to use them as little as possible. They are tools for emphasis. But if everything is emphasized, then nothing is emphasized.
Some lawyers are fond of running whole paragraphs in bold type when they feel strongly about the point they’re making. Don’t be one of them. Aside from wearing down the surface of their readers’ retinas, this gives them nowhere to go when they want to emphasize a word. Though some resort to underlining large segments of text or using a lot of bold italic, these are both bad ideas.
If you’re using a serif font (like Times, New Century Schoolbook, or Garamond) use italic if you’re looking for gentle emphasis, or bold if you’re looking for heavy emphasis.
Please emphasize this word
Please emphasize this word
If you’re using a sans serif font (like Arial, Helvetica, or Futura) use bold type for emphasis. It’s not worth italicizing sans serif fonts—unlike serif fonts, which look quite different when italicized, sans serif italic fonts merely have a gentle slant that doesn’t stand out on the page.
Please emphasize this word
Please emphasize this word
While I entirely agree with the thrust of this entry, I would like to raise two small points.
First, interspersing two (or more) levels of emphasis in a document (italic and bold), particularly on the same page, burdens typography with an expressive function that it cannot reasonably be expected to bear, and which even careful readers will fail to note. This word is emphasized and that one is really, really emphasized. What is the difference, exactly? It is often better to redraft to use the far more expressive medium of language to observe that this is an important point, but that one is crucial.
Second, there are a few sans serif fonts with genuine italics. Of the windows system fonts, Lucida Sans is a good example. Note the difference in the shape of the lowercase letter a.
Agreed—formatting tricks are not a substitute for good writing.
And true, there are sans serif fonts like Lucida Sans that have a few italic characters, but the rest of the characters are still just slanted versions of the roman characters and, per the above, hard to discern. Whereas most serif fonts, all the lowercase italic characters are different from the roman.
The only sans serif font that I know of that has a genuine italic is Triplex. And that’s largely because the roman and italic styles were drawn by different type designers (Zuzana Licko and John Downer) in different years. (I am a big fan of both Zuzana’s and John’s work.)
In reference to David Dickey’s comment, it is true that multiple typographic styles should not be used to indicate multiple degrees of emphasis, though the distinction between boldface and italics may serve another purpose. Boldface can easily be spotted when visually scanning through a document, while the same is not true of italics (due to its lighter weight). Thus boldface is useful for emphasizing terms that a reader may be looking for, while italics are more useful as the printed analogue to spoken stress.
It’s odd that you say But if everything is emphasized, then nothing is emphasized. - when most of the text on this website seems to be presented in boldface.
Avi, I believe that the author was being ironical and doing the opposite of what he was professing in order to demonstrate what happens when his advice is not followed.
In general I agree. And there are some amateurish lawyers who do this - usually the same ones who holler and wail in oral argument for emphasis. But at least in my practice in Seattle, I see too little bold-facing in letters, not too much.
When I teach letter-writing CLE’s, I advocate bold-facing if/then trip-wire points, such as: “If my firm does not receive $34,000 by Noon on Friday, June 13, 2008, we will file suit immediately in King County Superior Court for breach of contract, misrepresentation, and for violations under the Consumer Protection Act.”
Of note, neither of my law partners are willing to use bold in this way. As with my comment on double-spacing, I use bold in demand letters to increase clarity, and to reduce misunderstanding. I find that bold-facing one entire sentence out of a 1-2 page letter often does the trick. It makes it harder for an opposing counsel or a pro se to claim (rightly or wrongly) that they didn’t grasp a pivotal point.
Thoughts?
Cheers,
Christopher
Boldface is a tool for emphasis; so sure, a sentence with a special value—like a pre-litigation demand—can be run in boldface.
Personally, I would probably avoid boldface and just move a sentence like that as close to the beginning of my letter as possible. “Dear MegaCorp: I represent John Doe. Your company defrauded Mr. Doe when he bought a microwave oven from you in August 2008. If my firm does not receive $34,000…”
Most letters I get from lawyers don’t suffer from insufficient boldface—they suffer from not getting to the point fast enough. Improve your writing and you will solve a lot of formatting problems.
I advise putting the demand line as the very last line of the letter - again to avoid misunderstanding. Bold just helps this. Also, FWIW, I prefer to use neutrally worded facts rather than normative statements. So instead of “Your company defrauded….” I might say:
Mr. Doe purchased the 385J model megavac from you in August 2006. Although the promotional literature promised that the 385J would “miraculously levitate furniture while it vacuumed the room,” Mr. Doe contends that your product cannot, in fact, levitate furniture. If my firm does not receive $34,000….”
I do this because I like to have a letter that contains absolutely no statements that the opposing party can contradict. It’s harder to convince someone to accept your version of the facts or your legal analysis than to accept that you will do exactly what you said you’d do. I don’t think you actually need to convince the opposing party of your version of the facts or law (though it’s nice); you just need to make them blink first.
Your version is of course more concise. I think this is a point on which different lawyers can reasonably disagree. But I digress….
“The first rule of bold and italic fonts is to use them as little as possible. They are tools for emphasis. But if everything is emphasized, then nothing is emphasized.”
Matthew, this bears repeating. Don’t be shy about spreading the word elsewhere on your site. The same advice goes for adding a shade (aka, shadow) to make words stand out. I once worked for a guy in the sign trade who argued that shading all the lettering on a truck was a good way to impress the customer. In truth, the customer would have been more impressed if only his name had been shaded, and had thus been given a chance to save on labor costs. The truck lettering job would’ve looked better, too — but for the sake of being thorough, my boss thought it best to leave no part of the signage unshaded.
Hello People!
Bold, italic and the ghastly underline are like cologne or body spray… LESS IS MORE!
… it would be better to explain the meaning of “serif” and “sans serif” before this chapter… (an image or two would be enough, eh.)
When I was a young associate, a partner told me that using underlining and boldface were like elbowing the judge in the ribs. You might want to do it once, but not repeatedly!