i have a table....

on the left column is things that penguins found interesting in the sea e.g.

Fish
shells
seaweed

On the right column are things that polar bears found interesting in the sea - SOME are the SAME! e.g.

Fish
Whales
Shells
Seaweed

Now for clarity, I coloured anything in blue, which were unique to the penguins or polar bears, so everything they share stays black text.

My sup wants me to change it from blue to just being black italic text - she seems to think that I'll be printing it out with some kind of 19th century printing press and won't be able to have colour/ thinks for journals they'll prefer italic, but this is my thesis - CONFUSED!

Depends on how myopic your examiners are and whether they will notice the blue/black difference. I'd go for italics instead/as well.

Actually do you mean that you shaded in the cells of the table? Cos that'd make it pretty darn clear I imagine.

no its shaded text, not cells

The table is a full a4 page and is basically a list of about 50 things on the left and 45 on the right. And at the moment about 20 on each side are blue.

I wanted it to be like 'BAM - here are the differences' - hence the blue. Maybe she thinks it doens't look 'professional' enough?

should it not be black for shared things, blue for penguins and then another colour for the polar bears - or am I reading it totally wrong :$?

======= Date Modified 24 Oct 2011 17:08:04 =======
As an arty type, I reckon it should all be composites of green - the colour of the sea: yellow for the things only penguins find interesting (because that was a good flavour of choccy biccy); blue for the polar bears (because they are cold) and green for the things they both like because that's blue and yellow combined - and, as I say, it also signifies the sea.

However, as your supervisor has requested differentiation by itallics I'd do that too, keeping the colour coding because her preference is only due to the, most probably misguided idea, that you won't be able to print colour.

it could be difference coloured for htings unique to penguins and things unique for polar bears. But it looks clearer if its blue for unique things in general.

I think italics would work well. Or, you could go all out and have bold italics!

That's crazy talk. Bold AND italics!!!?

I guess I'll go with italics. I prefer blue, but I can see that if my examiner is traditional, then they may be blown out of the water with blue text lol and may take their revenge by failing me. Also I can see my sup will not let me submit until its italics.

:-s

Just so everyone is clear - it looks much better in blue! :-s (turkey)

I can see why you supervisor says itallics: it's far more traditional and conventional.

And some academics can be very sensitive about these things - grumpy old men and women - so, like you say, it's probably best to be safe. But that's just what I think. The grean/blue/yellow stuff was a joke, me being silly btw.

I always avoid colour, even for graphs, as journals publish in black and white, theoretically if you publish you will have to change everything in shades of grey.