[net.books] what is it with this @i

laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (10/09/83)

I am seeing this construction : @i(mumble) 
a fair bit these days in groups like net.books and net.sf-lovers. is this
some new way to reference books? (or just a nefarious plot to get those of us
who still use the @ character as line kill??)

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura

tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney) (10/12/83)

For all the rest of you who were wondering:  the @i(text) form that appears
in articles from time to time is the way to tell Scribe (a reasonably
popular word processor) to italicize the text.  I don't know of any news
interfaces that run their text through Scribe, so I assume the writer just
thought it would be better than going to ALL CAPS or *bracketing with
asterisks*, which seem to be the most common ways here.

Tim Maroney

geo@watarts.UUCP (10/14/83)

Laura asks, "what is it with this @i(mumble) stuff?"
I asked that of someone who had posted an article
containing such a construction, about eight months ago.
He told me that this is they way one indicates
to the scribe text formatter, that a phrase should
be in italics.  He told me that he had seen other
people use it, so he felt it was a generally understood
convention.

My initial reaction was the same as Laura's;  I tuned
out the part I didn't understand, and tried to figure
out what the person was saying by context.  
	Cordially, Geo Swan, Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo
	(allegra||ihnp4)!watmath!watarts!geo

fair@ucbvax.UUCP (10/16/83)

Laura,
	I checked the jargon file, and there is no reference to @i[word],
but I seem to recall that it is syntactically the same as *word* or \word/,
(i.e denoting emphasis).

	From a long time ARPAnaut,

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucb-arpa