Italics Is Me*

Italics is the typographic equivalent of underlining. Detalics is the typographic equivalent of undermining. Normally, italics is a slanted (to the right) cursive font of calligraphic handwriting, first used by Aldus Manutius and his press in Venice in 1500. Alternatively, detalics is slanted to the left.

It is a subtle distinction, as opposed to life and death, which are, respectively, underlined to the right and to the left.

I feel that nothing I do is important, nor worth underlining. I live my life in detail. I live leaning to the left. Does that sound sinister?

My biggest fear in life is that there will be—understood in a goes-without-sayingvsort of way—an embarrassing, deprecatory, and/or shameless exposure of me, relegated to that most feared of typographic sentinels.

What is that? you ask.

That sentinel can be affixed to my name. It is like a bullet that goes through both sides of my head, ending up outside, to the right. (Thus, like italics, it—and bullets, in general—lean to the right.)

And that typographic mortal blow is the asterisk.

I have an asterisk next to my name as if it is following me, and it is, because it follows my name.

It could be worse.

I could be followed by a footnote, with a full haranguing diatribe encased forever in posterity. A philippic of venom. A tirade a dozen invectives more than a full rant. (1 rant + 12 invectives = 1 rant.)

I block my entire legacy to change the font, style, and point-size. But that's not good enough. After blocking it again, I [CMD+X] it. Poof! There goes the Garamond. Poof! There goes the bold! The italics! The detalics!

But somewhere there is a remnant of it all—of me in detalics—written in cursive. In a notebook. One with coffee stains on it and perhaps even some squashed bug foolish enough to worm its way in between some pages further compressed by the coffee mug itself.

That bug is me.

Better that I not be an open book. Better that I be glyphicked in byzantine scribblings that only a cypher on the other side of the world can de-cipher. Reverse the tilt from left to right. De-talic the detalics until the sinister decays in reverse from maladroit to adroit. I long to be a droit. I long to be italicized, my asterisk plucked away and my footnotes whitewashed like weatherworn graffiti.