> > And a similar difference is used in all modern European > > languages: roman for normal text and italics for foreign words. > The only case I've seen this in use is for some special frases of > French origin when used in English. Besides, this is no "rule" (i.e. > you don't have to use italics), while this rule was applied to *all* > occurences of such words in old Swedish.
In formal typeset English, all foreign words and phrases (i.e., those words which are not considered to have been naturalized) are written in italic in a roman text, and in roman in an italic text. Thus while "role" is set in roman (a loanword), a word like *roman* (i.e., romance, novel) is set in italics. This is a hard and fast rule, and is codified as such in style manuals (for instance, the Chicago Manual of Style). While failure to do so is common, it is bad typographic practice.
