Capitalization:

a. Do not capitalize the word ancient, unless it comes at the start of a sentence. Try not to use it as a reference point for any period, though, as it is far too broad to be that useful. Think about using the word ‘modern’ in that way: it could potentially refer to any historical event from the death of Queen Victoria to current US election.

b. Don’t capitalize symposium unless referring to Plato’s text. For example: Plato’s Symposium takes place at a symposium, a male drinking party at which the only women present were entertainers and servers.

Italics

a. Use italics for titles of works: Plato’s Symposium, Seneca’s Oedipus. Also use italics for foreign words such as hamartia or laissez-faire.

b. Do no use italics for words that have been incorporated entirely into English, like symposium. (This can be hard to judge and it changes over time, however. You’ll find that some older texts italicize words that we would not, so this can be a hard one to judge.)

c. use italics for emphasis. For example: “I can’t believe that Caesar – Caesar – of all people dedicated his book on grammar to me! Now I have to write him a book!” cried Cicero to his long-suffering wife Terentia.

Phrases to avoid:

“the ancient world” or any variety of that phrase. Ancient is an adjective that in this context really means nothing and covers such a vast amount of time as to be meaningless.

“the modern world” or any variety of that phrase. I recommend avoiding ‘modern’ altogether unless there is some pressing reason. It’s very, very general as a term and so broad as to be meaningless.

Quotations

a. Enclose direct quotations within quotation marks. “Be boldly wrong”, said the poet Ovid, and that’s good advice.

b. Block quote all text longer than 3 lines and be sure to not use quotation marks. Like so:

Curio (who died during the Civil War while fighting for Caesar) had no hope of outdoing Scaurus in expensive decorations in his games for his father…so he had to think hard and come up with some new scheme. It’s a valuable lesson for us to know what he came up with and to be pleased with our values and, in a shift from what is usual, to call ourselves [moral] ancestors. He constructed two large wooden theatres right beside each other, each of which pivoted on a revolving point. In the morning each one hosted a play, and each half faced away from the other so that the plays did not drown each other out. And, then, suddenly each one revolved (and the sources say that after the first few days some spectators kept sitting as it did so) and the corners met and the whole became an amphitheatre in which he gave gladiatorial battles – although the gladiators were less for sale than the Roman people as they whirled around.

Pliny the Elder, Encyclopaedia 36.117

Remember even simple terms we may think are simple and shared may need explaining to others:

a. Romance and romantic do not mean the same thing to everyone. ‘Popular’ notions of romance often turn out to be not shared. So define what you mean when you use a term like this.

b. Gender. This one we’ll talk a lot about in seminar and tutorials. There’s no way to cover it here, though anyone who wants to try is welcome.