Please, Dear Authors

Dear Young Adult Authors,

I can imagine writing your first young adult novel is a bit like getting the keys to a feisty little Mazda Miata. You're having fun, you're fingers are moving speedy quick trying to keep up with your head, you get the occasional writer's high after a good spin at the keyboard.

And that's all great. But, please, use the keyboard wisely. Just because you have the power to rev up your little Miata of a keyboard doesn't mean you should always exercise that power.

I'm talking specifically about exercising your power to italicize.

I know it's there. Command or Apple and "I" is all it takes. Why would they put it there if they didn't want you to use it, right? It's not against the law after all.

The thing is, when you italicize a word or phrase repeatedly you're telling me how to read your story. It's as if you don't trust me to read your story or to get where you're going with it. So you're prodding me to read your story, your words, in such a way that I'll hopefully replicate how those words expressed themselves in your head when you typed them long ago.

Here's the paradox. You don't get to earn my trust. It's me, the reader, who's learning to trust you with every page I read. When you put headlights on words to get me to read them the way you want me to you're telling me not to trust you. That you maybe don't believe in the merit of the words you've strung together strongly enough to allow them to stand on their own printed legs.

Please, if you must, use italics at your own discretion. They are a tool, not to communicate how you want me to read your story but of the storytelling itself. When I see two, three, four or more words italicized on a page, repeatedly, that's not the storytelling talking. It's the storyteller talking.

You don't get to hold my hand while I read your story. You gave it away and they took it our of your hands a long time ago. And I congratulate you for all your hard work and success you've achieved between your Mazda Miata keyboard all the way to me at my kitchen table.

But you don't get to tell me how to read your book.

Cordially,
H