Mini-rant time! I recently reread a book in David Eddings' Belgariad, a favorite of mine two or three years ago, and I couldn't believe the difference between now and then. I noticed for the first time Eddings tends to italicize words quite often! In fact, if you managed to go through two pages without an italic its a miracle, and he loves to use multiple seperated italicized words, such as: "I got up in the morning and said hello to my cactus." Although to be fair, he does have a telepathic communication using italics, much like our esteemed author, and I didn't count it. It made the books unreadable. My point: Why do authors overuse such things? Does Steve overuse something and I have not noticed it, making me a hypocrite? Or have I finally bungee jumped off the cliffs into the abyss of insanity without a cord?