i blame the soviet ministry of propaganda. why they spent so much time editing the Arkady’s and Lem’s while Lenin was like “this is an apple, you eat it with your mouth and then you chew it with your teeth!” bro stop what the fuck

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    6 months ago

    The Italics were inserted to appeal to the average Italian who would otherwise be too busy drinking olive oil and spinning pizza dough in the air to read it.

    But with Italics in the mix?

    “Mama mia, Giuseppe, come-a ova here and read-a this book abouta socialismo, and some-a of the words are a-leaning like the Tower of Pisa”

    Anyway, this is ultimately what led to Gladio. Too many Italians were leaning into Marxist Leninism due to italics.

    • huf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      they could’ve still drawn some communists fighting snails on the margin… or communist snails fighting fascists, i dont care.

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    6 months ago

    Maybe it was to combat all the paragraph-long run-on sentences. I mean when you are making forty points of impact, before you end the sentence, the comma, can only get you so far.

    • rio [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      Bad translators tbh. In German that kind of structure is normal but a good translator would translate the structure into English norms, not just the words into English words.

      Then again, reading German philosophy wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t have to stop and catch your breath between each sentence.

    • fuckiforgotmypasswor [comrade/them,any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      for comparison: over-emphasizing every other word kills the natural flow of reading something yourself (and makes it seem like the writer is talking down to the reader). italics can be helpful for understanding what exactly an author is trying to say by emphasizing a certain word, but when you start forcing emphasis on every other word, and you’re doing it every sentence, reading the entire essay/book becomes unnecessarily arduous. I literally cannot read much of Lenin’s work, because it reads like a condescending reddit post. when I can find his writing with all the heavy-handed emphasis removed, it reads a lot more naturally.

    • fuckiforgotmypasswor [comrade/them,any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      over-emphasizing every other word kills the natural flow of reading something yourself (and makes it seem like the writer is talking down to the reader). italics can be helpful for understanding what exactly an author is trying to say by emphasizing a certain word, but when you start forcing emphasis on every other word, and you’re doing it every sentence, reading the entire essay/book becomes unnecessarily arduous. I literally cannot read much of Lenin’s work because it reads like a condescending reddit post. when I can find his writing with all the heavy-handed emphasis removed, it reads a lot more naturally.

      e: sorry i responded so late to this comment, its a good question