STYLE
use, to take them down into the market-place and sell them to the cannibals, who kill them and eat them for food. This they also do with younger persons when they fall into any desperate sickness.' . . . . The viscount was enthralled. 'I do like this book,' he said; 'could I buy it out of my pocket-money, please?' 'Another problem for uncles,' thought Lord Peter, rapidly ransacking his recollections of the Cosmographia to determine whether any of its illustrations were indelicate; for he knew the duchess to be straitlaced. On consideration, he could only remember one that was dubious, and there was a sporting chance that the duchess might fail to light upon it. —DOROTHY SAYERS, The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head I was in love with Kiyo Yamada. He would take me back to Osaka with him and we would live in a house with rice paper shoji screens and tatami mats. He would wear a yukata, and I would wear a glorious silk kimono printed with flying cranes and fresh-cut cherry blossoms. —ANN IRELAND, A Certain Mr. Takahashi
Note in the above excerpt that "kimono" is not italicized along with the other Japanese words, since this is a word that has been fully incorporated into English. Unambiguously foreign words should always be italicized, but how do you treat words that are designated as foreign, yet exist as entries in English dictionaries? The problem is, there isn't a neat distinction between foreign-derived words that have come to be considered standard English vocabulary, and those that haven't. Thus, some authors would italicize words such as doppelgdnger, ad hoc, ad nauseum, a priori, per se, summa cum laude, raison d'être, grande dame, sangfroid, chutzpah and gonif, and abbreviations such as e.g. ,i.e., et al., ibid., viz. and etc. Other authors would not. Dictionaries and style guides will differ on the treatment of these types of words, so if you are not obligated to follow a particular style, make your own decisions. You may do this on a word-by-word basis, rather than resolving, say, to italicize anything in Latin. Note that modern style is inclined to use roman (regular) type for all but the most unusual or exotic words, on the reasoning that italics are
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