Library of Formatting Examples:Italics/43A

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severe strain upon their endurance, but we assigned four
hunting units, twelve boats in all, to the task, and also
added to this contingent the destroyers <i>Wilkes</i> and <i>Parker</i>.
On the morning of September 2nd one of these subchaser
units picked up a suspicious sound. A little later the lookout
on the <i>Parker</i> detected on the surface an object that
looked like a conning-tower, with an upright just forward
which seemed to be a mast and sail; as it was the favourite
trick of the <i>U-53</i> to disguise itself in this way, it seemed
certain that the chasers were now on the track of this

Upright (non-italic) numerals

This is a wonderful example of why we need to recognize situations in which numbers would have been in italics if the printer had had them. This is from a Naval history. The names of ships (and boats) always are in italics, but only the "U" of the submarine's name is in italics. Obviously, it was the author's intention to italicize the entire name "U-53", but the printer didn't have such type. We do, so we mark it that way.

The most common example of this situation occurs in the "date" heading of letters, which is the very first example of in-line formatting in the Guidelines: "<i>Enacted 4 July, 1776</i>"