Random Italics

I believe a good story can be made better if it’s well-written. On the flip side, a good story that’s badly written may still be good, but it certainly isn’t helped. And the tools in an author’s box of same can either add to a good story’s elevation or contribute to its mediocrity.

Case in point: my current bedtime read. It features an interesting premise, likeable (if not memorable) characters, and a standard storyline with a curious twist folded into the well-worn theme of religious nuts purifying the earth by killing off the monsters who are, in fact, less monstrous than the men who are killing them. The book is the first in a series I might consider in its entirety except for one truly annoying thing: overuse of italics.

As a rule, I have no problem with italics. I use them myself, to emphasize a point or single out the title of someone else’s work, but if italics are meant to stress certain words while preserving the rhythm of a sentence, then English can’t be this author’s first language. She has sprinkled italicized words with gay abandon and apparently no thought to where they may land, and this practice consistently messes with the read. Worse, when I read a line a second time and ignore the italics, the sentence runs more smoothly. So why bother with the italics in the first place?

I know I’m not without sin. I have a debilitating fondness for the semi-colon*, but I have never encountered such flagrant use of “CTL+I” in my entire reading life. Which would be okay if it made sense or added to the mood of the scene.

But it doesn’t. It just creates a hiccup in the action; (*see?) a mental “huh?” that disrupts the cadence of the prose. Disappointing. Truly. And yet I must also wonder where the copy editor’s head was when reviewing the manuscript.

After all, genius doesn’t always extend to formatting and grammar.