The Sword and Laser discussion

I am reading the Kindle version of MCE, and am enjoying it very much, but I wanted to comment on the author's liberal use of italics. When it is used for the various official titles, in the poetry, that all is fine. It gets a little excessive, in my opinion, when it is used to provide emphasis to certain words when a character is speaking aloud or internally. It tends to disrupt my reading flow as my mind wants to place emphasis on those specific words, but it doesn't always feel natural, so my mind kind of stutters over those sentences. I feel like I am a little stripped of my autonomy as a reader when the author is continually directing me to what words should have emphasis.

I would be curious to know how other readers feel about the use of italics, and I'd also be curious to know if those same words are given extra emphasis in the audio version.

(view spoiler)[I did also toy with the idea that because there is an obvious importance on the nature of language and the meaning of words in MCE and also because there are secret meanings and messages encoded in certain communications between characters that the italicized words might be its own secret message to the reader. But if so, I can't decode it. (hide spoiler)]

I did find it distracting, and I think it is a quirk of Martine’s style, if her blog is any indication. I think an editor could probably be a little more exacting in discouraging the prevalence of italics in future books. It wasn’t a dealbreaker by any means, but it was noticeable.

Robyn wrote: "I would be curious to know how other readers feel about the use of italics, and I'd also be curious to know if those same words are given extra emphasis in the audio version."

I listened to the audiobook so I don’t know if it was read as intended. Seemed natural to me, but I get what you mean when people put the emPHAsis on different syllABles.

On the other hand, it can have the effect of opening up one’s brain to a different view of the world because it is unexpected. I think the single best example of this is Marlon Brando’s line reading from On the Waterfront.

Most people would’ve said, “I could’ve been somebody,” but he instead went with, “I could’ve been somebody,” which is a small but significant change that keeps the audience off-kilter.

https://youtu.be/efHzGxEzDQA

William Shatner has spent 65 years trying to emulate that scene. 😆

Robyn wrote: "liberal use of italics. ,..."

Italics are a useful tool - but if they are ever over-used to the point where a reader asks this question, the author has made a bad mistake

Alan wrote: "Robyn wrote: "liberal use of italics. ,..."

Italics are a useful tool - but if they are ever over-used to the point where a reader asks this question, the author has made a bad mistake"

I’m about 40% of the way through and I too am finding the italics a bit of a distraction. Not enough to make me want to stop reading, but enough to make me wish that the editor had been a lot sterner.

Just to add a data point:

I actually clicked on this thread wondering "Did she use italics?"

By the way, yes she did - but I guess I was so sucked in I really didn't notice.

(or possibly I'm just weird).

William wrote: "(or possibly I'm just weird)"

Yes, possibly. :p

There was one book a few years ago that rendered the entire 7-page prologue in italics. Nevermind that 7 pages isn’t a prologue, that’s a chapter, but it was effectively unreadable due to the typeface they chose.

Authors, take note: don’t do that.

I am good with an author using italics for conveying a character's unspoken thoughts, but it should be used very sparingly for any character's spoken words. The reader should be able to infer from the scene if there should be special emphasis on particular words, otherwise the author hasn't done their job.

Are all of you the kind of folks bothered by minor continuity errors in movies? That's not snark; I've noticed that some people are really bugged by things that I don't even notice. In a good story or movie, I never really see these things, but others do, apparently.

What do you mean by continuity? I can tell you it certainly bothers me in books, movies and TV shows where characters suddenly act or do things "out of character."

(By the way, don't you also hate when an author puts something "in parentheses" to highlight something that should be obvious to the reader?)

:)

G.R. wrote: "What do you mean by continuity? I can tell you it certainly bothers me in books, movies and TV shows where characters suddenly act or do things "out of character."

(By the way, don't you also hate..."

LOL..

Continuity errors in movies are often visual inconsistencies. In novels, they can be the equivalent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continu...

"One of the earliest examples of a visual error appears in Charlie Chaplin's 1914 movie The Property Man.[1] Here, in a supposedly smooth step from one room to another, the Tramp loses his hat in one room, but it is instantly back on his head as he enters the next room. Rather "loose" plots and a lack of continuity editing made most early films rife with such errors."

Rick wrote: "Are all of you the kind of folks bothered by minor continuity errors in movies? That's not snark; I've noticed that some people are really bugged by things that I don't even notice. In a good story..."

Minor ones? No. If I were bothered by small continuity errors I could never enjoy a Spielberg movie. He’s the king of continuity conundrums.

I’m more bothered by his BIG continuity omissions, such as, oh, pretty much everything to do with the T. rex in his Jurassic Park movies. In the first one the T. rex paddock has flat, level ground, then 5 minutes later it’s next to a chasm with a giant tree the people have to climb down. As MST3K once said about a flick they were roasting, “The geography of this film is suspicious.” Then there are the impact tremors of her footsteps which conveniently disappear at the very end when she has to sneak into the building. In the second movie the T. rex somehow gets out of the cargo ship hold, slaughters everyone on the ship, including inside the bridge where she can’t fit, then manages to operate the controls to lock herself back in the hold. Yes, I’m aware that it was originally supposed to be velociraptors who did the murder, but they were cut from the film, leaving a hugely glaring mistake.

That’s the equivalent of seven pages of italics.

I love Raiders of the Lost Ark, but there’s a scene where Indy climbs aboard the U-boat after the Nazis have taken the Ark and Marion from the Bantu Wind. After he gives a cocky salute to the cargo ship, he frantically looks around for a way into the sub, but it’s sealed up. We then see a map of it traveling a fair distance to the island and suddenly Indy shows up, soaking wet. The implication being that he clung to the outside of the ship for hours and a hundred miles (or more). Um, what? I know that diesel subs didn’t fully submerge for very long because their engines need air, but they’re still underwater except for the snorkel. Presumably he tied his whip to the snorkel and was dragged through the ocean all night. Even for a Fantasy movie that’s hard to buy into.

G.R. wrote: "What do you mean by continuity? I can tell you it certainly bothers me in books, movies and TV shows where characters suddenly act or do things "out of character.""

Some continuity errors are unavoidable. Often a scene is shot over multiple days and small things are forgotten, such as the infamous water bottle and coffee cup in Game of Thrones.

Sometimes it’s just an minor editing thing where they take a shot from earlier and insert it later in the scene, creating a continuity error. At the end of Top Gun, for instance, when the pilots are back aboard the ship, Tom Cruise takes his sunglasses off but when he’s picked up by someone else they’re back on. It’s not a big deal. https://youtu.be/9s-a1vp4LLk

More problematic are movies like The Dark Knight Rises where Christopher Nolan *clearly* had mentally checked out from his job and simply didn’t give a crap any more. When the bad guys are taking down the stock market and a chase ensues on magically-summoned motorcycles, they enter a tunnel in full daylight but exit the tunnel moments later in the middle of the night. It completely ruins the scene and makes the entire heist aspect nonsensical, because it’s like time travel. If it’s now midnight, then the stock market has been closed for hours. That movie is stuffed full of such egregious boners.

The great Jack Lemmon was very careful about preserving continuity and making the editor’s job easier. In one anecdote another actor told about him, when they were shooting a dinner scene Lemmon went to the prop master and said, “I want three cherry tomatoes and a piece of cheese on the plate.” Which sounds like a weird movie star demand, but what Lemmon was actually doing was punctuating his dialogue by eating.

So when Lemmon wanted to make a dramatic point, he would stab the tomato or skewer the cheese, and he would do it at the exact same point in the speech. “You come here and threaten me?” *stab* “No, I’m in charge here.” *eat* So when they shoot that as a master with everything onscreen, then reshoot it again as a closeup, then reshoot it again as an alternate angle on the other actor, Lemmon’s shots all match up perfectly.

If you watch restaurant scenes carefully, you’ll notice the actors often aren’t eating, they are merely drinking. That’s because the food has been sitting there for hours and is disgusting. Some of it isn’t even real. (Mashed potatoes instead of ice cream, for instance, or shaving cream instead of whipped cream.) Because cherry tomatoes are the size of grapes and don’t go bad under lights, Lemmon could eat 20 of them over multiple takes without getting sick or having to use a spit bucket. (Which is one of most disgusting jobs on a movie set. Actor takes a bite of cold hamburger/hotdog/pizza/soup but doesn’t swallow. An assistant runs up with a bucket and the actor spits out the chewed-up food. Repeat until bucket is full. Gross.)


G.R. wrote: "(By the way, don't you also hate when an author puts something "in parentheses" to highlight something that should be obvious to the reader?)"

I prefer parentheses to be used as meta-commentary. Such as: “Monica said she was at the spa all day. (She wasn’t.)”

Weirdly when I was a kid the convention when we were reading aloud in class was to not speak the parts in parentheses. That always struck me as bizarre. It’s still part of the story. I was therefore determined to read the parenthetical out loud, but in all my years I was never asked to read a section which included one,

Love the examples from you all of movie continuity gaffes.

I asked originally because if a story is involving I don't notice any but the most egregious errors. I read MCE months ago but when I saw this topic I realized that I'd never even registered the use of italics as a thing. That's not me being right or better (or wrong and worse!) but it got me wondering about the differences in how we perceive fiction and movie continuity errors seem to me the same kind of thing...

Actually, I find many of those types of gaffes with sloppy film-editing to be very amusing, not bothersome. It's almost fun to find them. I am more turned off by plot gaffes (such as the one Trike mentioned about the T-Rex in the second Jurassic Park movie) or ones that defy physics (which still seem to be common in many action and sci-fi movies).

G.R. wrote: "Actually, I find many of those types of gaffes with sloppy film-editing to be very amusing, not bothersome. It's almost fun to find them. I am more turned off by plot gaffes (such as the one Trike ..."

There’s a fine line between cheating physics to make something more dramatic and rendering something unbelievable. Which is pretty much what good sci-fi does, really: it tricks you into believing impossible or implausible stuff by hewing close to the line of believability.

In the Robert Redford skiing movie Downhill Racer, the course he takes during a race is utterly impossible. Physics wouldn’t allow it. But the editing fools you into accepting it. Compare that to any Fast & Furious flick, where natural law has no more sway than in a Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

When I saw The Sixth Sense the first time, I was duped by what appear to be numerous continuity errors, but instead it was Shyamalan cleverly using expectations and experience against me. When you see the kid riding the bus, for instance, the seat next to him is empty. Cut to inside and Bruce Willis is sitting there. In any regular film that’s just a mistake. But in this movie it’s intentional.

One of the issues I had with another recent S&L pick, The Light Brigade, was that the protagonist “leveled up” offscreen, which created a discontinuity for me. I thought I had missed something, so I went back twice to check.

Rick wrote: "Love the examples from you all of movie continuity gaffes.

I asked originally because if a story is involving I don't notice any but the most egregious errors. I read MCE months ago but when I saw this topic I realized that I'd never even registered the use of italics as a thing. That's not me being right or better (or wrong and worse!) but it got me wondering about the differences in how we perceive fiction and movie continuity errors seem to me the same kind of thing..."

It’s not just errors but also intentional things that are subtle.

My brain is totally movie-focused at the moment so I can’t come up with anything from a book to illustrate what I mean, but I do have two examples from film:

In Christopher Nolan’s Memento there is a brief shot that is a literal blink-and-miss-it moment that changes *everything* about the story. My wife, my friend Steve and I were watching it and when the flash-change happened Steve and I practically jumped up and went “WHOA! DID YOU SEE THAT?!” My wife was baffled. We had to rewind it twice before she caught it.

It’s more obvious when the scene is isolated: https://youtu.be/OZu07syKeck

In Back to the Future there’s the famous bit where the Twin Pines Mall sign is changed to the Lone Pine Mall, because in 1955 Marty ran over Old Man Peabody’s pine tree. It’s front and center in the shots and even called out twice in dialogue, but it still escapes people when they see it because there’s so much else going on. But that’s used as an indicator that Marty isn’t returning to the time he knew.

https://images.app.goo.gl/LHUpeizAEHV...

Rick wrote: "I read MCE months ago but when I saw this topic I realized that I'd never even registered the use of italics as a thing."

I didn't notice either. A few months later, mostly I just remember enjoying the book and even having someone point it out I can't recall an increased use of italics in this book.

I barely noticed the italics. The only time they become a distraction, is when they are used for whole paragraphs in some books. A word here and there doesn't bother me.

As to continuity "errors" or continuity choices made purposely, "24" (the TV show) if binged has some of the most egregious ones.

In one of the early seasons, Bauer is standing in an empty field having just called the CTU team. The next episode starts, with the clock showing it's seconds from the last scene. JB is now standing in the same field with the full CTU team working, tents set up and gear everywhere. Something that would have taken hours in real time.

There are plenty of these that watching a week apart you may not notice, but watching back to back become glaringly obvious.

I'm also not noticing the italics, as I'm really enjoying the story, so its easier to not notice. I think that is the way of good and interesting stories, you suspend disbelief to enjoy what you is entertaining you and fill in the broken parts with your imagination. It's like reading a sentence with the vowels missing, your brain fills them in. Of course, not all people are alike, so for some, this is intolerable, and you have my sympathies.

As for continuity errors, I love bad movies and love seeing all the flubs that can go into movies. I follow a youtube series, Everything Wrong with... which shows all the "sins" a movie has made. They have reviewed all sorts of movies, from the truly awful, like "Troll 2", and the really good like "Star Wars". They ALL have continuity errors, plot holes, and just plain errors. Even classics like "It's a Wonder Life" has huge ones.

To err is human is a truly valid statement, and so I find these errors to be really endearing, as we try our best to make art of any kind, from novels to television to movies.

One last thing on "Raiders..", I think that plot hole with him riding the submarine was intentional. Indiana Jones is a legend, larger than life character, in the vein of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan. Having him rise out of the water was like him being dragged by the truck and not being torn to bits. It's ridiculous, but then Indiana would be Indiana if he couldn't find a way to hide on a sub to sneak attack the Natzis.

Robyn wrote: "I am reading the Kindle version of MCE, and am enjoying it very much, but I wanted to comment on the author's liberal use of italics. When it is used for the various official titles, in the poetry,..."

Interesting. I did the audio version and didn't notice anything out of place. The narrator is AMAZING and there was some emphasis when the character was using extreme/loud tone but that's all i noticed.

I agree, the narration is fantastic. I sometimes get distracted by trying to figure out complicated/weird names so I find that audio is working best for me.

I third that narration by Amy Landon is good she even has a different voice for the 2 Yskanders. which you can tell the difference between because the youthful or mahit's yskander sound like a 20 something all arrogance and bravado. it does not take a lot to impress me but to add the depth of age and attitude to the same voice is impressive to me. she pulled it off perfectly.

Lee wrote: "I third that narration by Amy Landon is good she even has a different voice for the 2 Yskanders. which you can tell the difference between because the youthful or mahit's yskander sound like a 20 s..."

I’m starting to think I should have got this as an audiobook rather than a paperback, as I have found the italics a distraction and it’s definitely lowered my enjoyment of the book. I think I’ll probably get the sequel in audiobook.

a desolation called peace is available on preorder on audible I could not tell if Amy Landon is narrating. but if she is I would definitely do audio. I put her performance up the with Miora Quirk in Gideon the ninth. audible is doing a great job casting narrator for new books long gone are the day of having George Guidall, Simon Vance, and Simon Prebble read everything

Aw, I like Simon Vance. He is absolutely the voice of Guy Gavriel Kay's wry wit in my head.

But I agree, the narration on this is exquisite. I came straight off the back of an audiobook I ditched because the narrator couldn't (or simply didn't) manage the pacing of sentences, the internal and external dialogue, and the first-person narration. Landon did it exceptionally well.

I like Simon Vance to. those are three of my favorite narrators. but I have to admit it's king of jarring to be listening to Dickens and asking myself if that the guy who read Dune.

I did not find the use of italics that annoying... Using appropriate emphasis is always appropriate in scholarly work.

It may be that I am just not very visual!!!!

Iain wrote: "I did not find the use of italics that annoying... Using appropriate emphasis is always appropriate in scholarly work.

It may be that I am just not very visual!!!!"

*eye twitches*

Hahaha!

I found the excessive use of italics super distracting. At one point I stopped to count. Over two pages in the book spread open in front of me, I counted 11 instances of italics (used for emphasis, not to denote words in a different language), and I feel that was pretty representative of the their use throughout the entire book. I was pretty surprised an editor would have not asked the author to remove more, but then again, I'm not an editor. But they were completely unnecessary in many of the instances.