Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:12, 28 April 2015

Revision as of 15:46, 15 December 2015

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''Italic'' (edited as <code><nowiki>''</nowiki>italic<nowiki>''</nowiki></code>) is used for:

*Words of foreign languages, other than established [[loan word]]s: "''hidari''" (Jp: "left"); but not "gauche" (Fr: "left"), an established loan word in English.

*Binomial names of organisms (''Genus species''), which are considered Latin, even if newly coined. (The initial letter of a genus is always capitalized, but never that of a species.) Higher taxonomic levels are not italicized. When both the classification term and its name form a unified title, theyhither are both first-letter capitalized: "Family Poaceae"; when they do not form a title, only the name is capitalized: "the family Poaceae".

*Technical or scientific terms that are defined above in the same article (and appear there in '''''bold italic'''''; see below) to demonstrate use of the term, or emphasize that use to the reader. Although it is standard practice in text books to put in italics or bold font those words likely to be new to the reader only the first time the word appears, it is helpful to the learning process if newly defined terms that reappear are rendered in ''italic'' font elsewhere in a Wikipedia article.

*Terms that are not defined at that point in the text, but are nonetheless "technical", although will likely appear in numerous other articles in Wikipedia. Here, the "emphasize only the first time used on a page" rule could apply. Example (from [[Plant]]):