Scary Adventures in Typography

Zoe, my 8th grader, came home with a photocopy of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which her lit class is reading and discussing. It was a Project Gutenberg free etext version of the story that some grownup had printed out for the kids. Fair enough. But whomever printed it out printed the entire story in ITALICS! Bad idea. This became a teaching moment in typography for me. PAGE AFTER PAGE OF ITALICS IS BAD, people. Too hard to read. She was finding the story somewhat confusing. Reading Washington Irving in italics would make my head hurt, too. Zoe, being charitable, wondered if the perpetrator had printed it all in italics to replicate an old-fashioned publication. Maybe so, but there is no statue of limitations on typographical crime!