When an entire paragraph or a long sentence in a foreign language is quoted in full, the quotation-marks are sufficient to show that the quoted matter is not a part of the text. Italic is not needed, but bibliographers who habitually select italic for the citations of books prefer that character for all quotations, whether they do or do not make an entire paragraph. The verse that follows is in the style preferred by Pollard[1] in his reprint of the colophon of an edition of Bartolus de Saxoferrato on the Digests of Justinian, printed by Windelin of Speyer:
Si correcta voles digesta evolvere legum,
Hec erne, quae nulla carpere parte potes.
Perlege: non parvo sunt emendata labore.
Nil nisi correctum vendere Spira jubet.
One revival of an old fashion in typography is the selection of italic in modern books for bits of verse between paragraphs in the text of roman, but it is not a fashion to be commended.
An unusual word or a short phrase in a foreign language, even when it is accompanied by a translation, is sometimes required to be set in italic, as in
It was a simple chaise, a due posti, neither new nor neat.
The métayer system is not beneficial to the farmer.
We had our déjeuner à la fourchette as early as eleven o'clock in the morning.
- ↑ Last Words on the History of the Title Page, etc., p. 11.
