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This is a typography question. I'm not sure if it's on-topic here; please feel free to migrate to a more appropriate site if necessary.

I'm typesetting HPMOR for private amusement, and the online text is typographically fairly liberal. I might like to edit my version to be a little more consistent, and this situation came up:

When someone speaks emphatically and I want to style this with italics, and the entire speech is emphasized, do the quotation marks get emphasized, too?

Example:

He said, ``don't \emph{look} at it.''      % this is fine
She said, \emph{``Why not?''}              % like this?
He replied, ``\emph{I don't know!}''       % or like this?
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    Logically, I would not since you are quoting emphatic speech rather than emphasising the quotation. If you were emphasising the quotation (for some reason), that might be different. On the other hand, some traditions prefer Illogical Punctuation so I don't know whether this is correct or, if it is, whether it is also correct where you are.
    – cfr
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:26
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    From a logical standpoint, you wouldn’t include them in the emphasization. Typographically speaking, you do include them. (This also may depend on the language you are writing in.) Just look at your example how “ and I as well as ! and ” look together: Straight vs slanted, horizontal spacing (“ and I are far away from each other, ! and ” are very close).
    – Qrrbrbirlbel
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:31
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    @Qrrbrbirlbel: The font I have works really well either way, so that's not a problem. Doesn't Bringhurst even say that it makes no sense to italicize punctuators? He strongly argued to always use upright parentheses, for example, so the same could probably be said of quotation marks...
    – Kerrek SB
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:36
  • My system is that the punctuation marks should only be italicised if the whole phrase/clause/sentence they delimit is italicised.
    – ChrisS
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 0:56
  • Not to detract from your effort (on the contrary!) – but you’re certainly aware that there are already properly typeset versions, right? If I might offer a suggestion: what’s really missing is an Open Source version that invites collaboration – i.e. having a source published on GitHub and soliciting pull requests. (That said, even just having a properly typeset version would be nice. The current PDF is certainly far from perfect, and the ebook versions are little more than plain text.)
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 19:47

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