The Daily Illuminator Post About A Single Letter

A funny thing happened as we've been working on the next batch of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. I'm obfuscating this anecdote slightly to not give anything away, but the core is true.

Because creating these books relies on careful attention to the original print editions, we do a lot of checks to ensure the text is as accurate as we can make it.

One element we have to do manually is a formatting check, where we confirm that the bold, italics, and capitalization is retained from the previous printings.

This is done with two people: one person carefully skims the original book, and the other double-checks the current version of our document based on what the first person finds. Most of the time, I'm in the "read the old book" role, and Nikki – Production Artist extraordinaire – is seated in front of InDesign, verifying or fixing as needed.

The way this normally goes is I'll say something like, "[section] 217, end of the section: You pick up the Book of Hidden Spells. 'Book of Hidden Spells' is italicized." Nikki will make an affirmative noise indicating that it's correctly formatted in the file and I'll go on.

When it comes to italicized text that isn't a title, I'll use my voice to inflect the emphasis: "About the middle of the section: 'You try to find the path.' The 'try' is italicized." I use my "lecture/teacher/actor" cadence to really highlight what's formatted, so we reduce the back and forth as to what text, exactly, needs something special done to it.

That's all background for this anecdote.

So, I get to one part in the book we're working on, and I say something like: "187, about one-third from the top: 'It's clear that you are in trouble.' Just the 'are' is italicized."

Nikki pauses. "Just the 'are'?"

I nod. "Is that a problem?"

"It's just . . . weird."

There's a moment's silence between us as I figure out how to progress, when Nikki chirps: "Oh! I get it! The word 'are' is italicized!"

"Yes?" I ask, confused.

"Sorry," Nikki continues. "The way you emphasized it and then said just the 'are,' I thought you meant the letter 'R' in the word 'are.'"

This wasn't as farfetched as it seemed, since sometimes the text does use partial emphasis in words, such as how the original text might emphasize "something" or "undead." We have to be careful to make sure only the correct bits receive special treatment.

The confusion cleared, and we correctly formatted the word "are." Then we continued with making sure the remaining sections of that book received our letter-by-letter attention, pausing only to jot down a note as a reminder to share this anecdote with you all . . .

. . . which I have now done.

-- Steven Marsh