Help me with text emphasis

Subject: Help me with text emphasis
From: Peggy Thompson <Peggy_Thompson -at- CCMAIL -dot- OSTI -dot- GOV>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 14:55:00 -0400

The following paragraph is typical of what I work (struggle)
with--it contains any number of search terms, user input, and
directives that require special emphasis in the text (these are
bookended by asterisks in the example below). Kindly give me
your suggestions for uses of italic, bold, bold italic, or even
a different font for these various kinds of emphasis. (We strive
for clarity and, dare I say it, elegant simplicity.)

"For example, to search the Words in Text field for either
the term *oil* or the term *petroleum*, enter *oil,
petroleum*. The resulting set will contain records having
either the term *oil* or the term *petroleum*. The operator
OR searches for records that meet *any* of the search
criteria.

"If you wish to OR *between* fields, you must use the Guided
Search."

Another question: when we use italics and bolding, we want to
use a font for each that is a bit different from the text font
(otherwise, we find our bolding and italic getting lost). I say
that if we do that, ALL instances of italic and bold must adhere
to that same font--that is, if you bold a word such as
*petroleum* above and you bold chapter references, both must be
in the same font. (Some here have argued that *petroleum* should
be in a different bold font for special emphasis, while a bolded
chapter reference should simply be the regular text font
bolded.)

And one MORE question: how do you handle internal references to
chapters and subheadings? Do you put chapter heads in italic,
heading in bold, or some such? Or would you use the same
emphasis technique for both the chapter titles and the
subheadings?

Sorry for these amateurish questions--we are updating our style
sheets which clearly are out of step with the modern world. ;)
(And no, we are not trying to change for change's sake!)

You may reply directly to me. Many, many thanks.


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