Emphasis (typography)

In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasize them. It is the equivalent of prosodic stress in speech.

Methods and use

The most common methods in Western typography fall under the general technique of emphasis through a change or modification of font: italics, boldface and small caps. Other methods include the alteration of letter case and spacing as well as color and additional graphic marks.

Font styles and variants

The human eye is very receptive to differences in brightness within a text body. Therefore, one can differentiate between types of emphasis according to whether the emphasis changes the “blackness” of text. A means of emphasis that does not have much effect on “blackness” is the use of italics, where the text is written in a script style, or the use of oblique, where the vertical orientation of all letters is slanted to the left or right. With one or the other of these techniques (usually only one is available for any typeface), words can be highlighted without making them stand out much from the rest of the text (inconspicuous stressing). This was used for marking passages that have a different context, such as words from foreign languages, book titles, and the like.