acro package: Italicize first occurrence of term

Question

I am using the acro package for acronyms because, for a phrase that is not a proper name, I can have the first letter of each word uncapitalized except when it starts off a sentence, in which case the very first letter of the phrase is capitalized. Like other packages, it allows user-specification of plural forms for the acronym and the long phrase. Unlike other packages, it provides these capabilities without having to externally make an index. It is not a full fledge glossary package, but it meets my needs for acronyms.

For the acro package, is there a way to italicize the first occurrence of the phrase, when the acronym is introduced, but without italicizing the acronym itself? The vanilla way of introducing a phrase and its acronym is \ac{label}, which expands to the phrase followed by its acronym in brackets. The command \textit{\ac{label}} causes both the phrase and the acronym to be italicized.

I know that the acronym package (as opposed to the acro package) does the proper italicization with \acfi{label}, at least according to ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/pub//tex/macros/lat ... cronym.pdf. However, this is not recognized using the acro package.

I'm not sure if a MWE is needed for this question, but here is a toy file:

  \documentclass{article}
     \usepackage{acro}
     \DeclareAcronym{abc}{
        short=ABC,
        long=alpha bettick crisps
     }
  \begin{document}

     The objective of this report is to test acronyms like
     \ac{abc}.  \acresetall \Ac{abc} are delicious.

     \acresetall
     \textit{\ac{abc}}.

     \cleardoublepage
     \printacronyms[%
        name = {Abbreviations},
        sort = false
     ]

  \end{document}

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 18 '23 at 09:29

8

You can use the format/first-long key wich controls the format for the long form on first usage (with \ac, \acf or \acflike and their uppercase, plural and indefinite forms).

\acsetup{format/first-long=\itshape}

A complete example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{acro}
\DeclareAcronym{abc}{
  short=ABC,
  long=alpha bettick crisps
}
\acsetup{format/first-long=\itshape}
\begin{document}
The objective of this report is to test acronyms like
\ac{abc}.  \acresetall\Ac{abc} are delicious.
\ac{abc}.
\cleardoublepage
\printacronyms[%
  name = {Abbreviations},
  sort = false,
]
\end{document}

The text in the document:

enter image description here

The entry in the list:

enter image description here

Using

\acsetup{format/first-long=\itshape}

will italicize the long form of the acronym everywhere (including the list of acronyms).

One can do this on a per acronym basis (thanks to cgnieder) using the format/first-long or long-format keys in the acronym declaration:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{acro}
\DeclareAcronym{abc}{
  short=ABC,
  long=alpha bettick crisps
}
\DeclareAcronym{def}{
  short=DEF,
  long=delta elphic furs,
  format/first-long=\itshape
}
\begin{document}
The objective of this report is to test acronyms like
\ac{abc}.  \acresetall\Ac{abc} are delicious.
The objective of this report is to test acronyms like
\ac{def}.  \acresetall\Ac{def} are delicious.
\cleardoublepage
\printacronyms[%
  name = {Abbreviations},
  sort = false,
]
\end{document}

enter image description here

edited Jul 18 '23 at 09:29

Mark Fijneman

3

answered Sep 17 '13 at 00:54

Gonzalo Medina

505,128

Thanks, Gonzalo. At the risk of sounding demanding, I don't suppose one could control this on a per-acronym basis? I don't think its needed when the long phrase is a proper name. And there are some times when I don't want to emphatically pound the table (so to speak), which italics looks like.
P.S. This thread is crossposted at http://latex-community.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=23865

P.P.S. Odd that a carriage return is interpretted as clicking on the post submission button when composing here.
– user36800 Sep 17 '13 at 15:09
@user36800 you can switch styles at desired points in your document. Please see my updated answer. – Gonzalo Medina Sep 17 '13 at 15:19
@user36800 you can specify long-format=<whatever> on a per acronym basis by setting it in \DeclareAcronym: \DeclareAcronym{aa}{ short = aa , long = AAAAAA , long-format = \itshape } – cgnieder Sep 17 '13 at 16:03
@cgnieder Ah.... mind if I add that to my answer? – Gonzalo Medina Sep 17 '13 at 16:08
@GonzaloMedina feel free to add it :) – cgnieder Sep 17 '13 at 16:09
BTW: One can also add first-long-format on a per acronym basis. (IIRC this acts in addition to a possibly specified long-format and not as a replacement.) – cgnieder Sep 17 '13 at 16:13
@cgnieder added. Thanks! By the way, lately I've seen some of your recent packages; unfortunately I haven't had the time to look at them in detail, but they are great! – Gonzalo Medina Sep 17 '13 at 16:25

acro package: Italicize first occurrence of term

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