using italics - (Sep/10/2012 )

hi guys,

as you all know, english is not my first language (one of my favourite chatup lines) but anyway, now I have a question that does not involve english as much, but it's more about italics rules.

I'm aware that scientific names must be italized, but does it also apply when you're only using the genus? e.g. Arabidopsis thaliana must be in italics, but most of the times I've seen Arabidopsis without them.

thanks in advance


tj.

are you talking about Arabidopsis thaliana or Arabidopsis? If genus and species are together then you have to make them italics in writing on notebook you have to underline them. I think only Genus name is written in non-italics.

see
http://arabidopsis.info/InfoPages?template=arabidopsis;web_section=arabidopsis

hi prabhubct, yeah, that's what I thought, that the genus is not normally writen in italics.

thing is I'm not sure if it is because Arabidopsis is the common name of the plant, e.g. tulip for Tulipia, or it is referred to the Genus. I'm asking because this was one of the corrections I have to make on my thesis, when I referred to the genus of my species I didn't put it in italics and one of the examiners asked me to change them all, but wanted to make sure.

thanks for your input.

At least in zoology (see INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE, Appendix B, General Recommendations) you also use italics for genus name alone. I wonder if it's different in botany. Underlined are such names when italics are not available such as typewriters (if people still know what it is).
My guess for the Arabidopsis Arabidopsis is that the researchers don't know it or don't care (such as some molecular biologists that give a damn for taxonomy and it's rules ).
> You should look in a good journal for botany regulations, how the authors do it there.

and as addendum: check out this: http://www.aspt.net/publications/sysbot/checklist_systbot.php :
"Font formatting in manuscript corresponds to that used in the journal (e.g., italics for genus and species names;...)."

we can also check this out: http://www.brandeis.edu/writingprogram/davisgrant/daviswritingassignments/biology/bio_commonmistakes.pdf
it gave a pretty good explanation why the generic names of some common model organismssuch as Arabidopsis and Drosophila are not italicised when used alone.

But the common names for these are thale cress and fruit fly.

hobglobin on Mon Sep 10 17:11:41 2012 said:

I guess not meant in this "common" names sense but more common tech sense such as in scientific publications etc.

casandra on Mon Sep 10 17:20:33 2012 said:

well perhaps that's the difference between (molecular) biology that deals with very few model organisms in the lab and other biology fields that also remember and deals with other Drosophila and Arabidopsis species . I wonder if the journals where the first are publishing also accept the non-italics for model organisms.

Nowadays rules seems bit relaxed,


2001 Nature paper- http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v3/n11/full/nrg927.html

2012 Nature Paper - http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/cdd2012114a.html