My guess is that it's just a matter of style. The binomial is just the generic and specific portion of the name -- not the family, order, etc. Italics are often used as a form of emphasis. Italicizing every taxonomic term up to kingdom that is based on "foreign" roots would dilute the effect.
Note that scientific names are generally always italicized, regardless of the country of publication. (Even Greek scientific names would be italicized in Greece. I would think it is for emphasis, period. Also note that, regardless of what the Web site says, words of foreign origin are NOT always italicized. English is an amalgamation of many different languages. We'd go crazy trying to sort out the Saxon terms from the Celtic terms from the Norse terms from the French terms, etc. (Not to mention the p-Celtic from the q-Celtic, or whatever.) Dave ------------------------------------------------------ David M. Lawrence | Home: (804) 559-9786 7471 Brook Way Court | Fax: (804) 559-9787 Mechanicsville, VA 23111 | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] USA | http: http://fuzzo.com ------------------------------------------------------ "We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo "No trespassing 4/17 of a haiku" -- Richard Brautigan -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Inouye Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 1:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: why italics? Why do we italicize only genus and species names when presenting taxonomic information? One web site I looked at claims that "By the way, the italics are used only because it is proper, in writing, to italicize words that are in any language other than English." Aren't any other parts of the taxonomic hierarchy in Latin?
