I always felt that writers never seemed to fully utilize the various tools and weapons at their disposal when writing, especially in today’s day of computers. Why, I asked myself, would writers not want to add more emphasis to their writing? Why? Why did my sister always remove the various colors and different fonts I would occasionally use when writing? It never made the least bit sense to me. William Faulkner, for example, originally wanted each unique stream-of-conscious moment in The Sound and the Fury to appear in different colors, something that would further symbolize the different time periods he was harnessing with his character’s memories. If this brand of writing was good enough for Faulkner, why not me? After all, he did advocate the reading and absorption of ideas.

I used bold in that final word because bold never seems to get proper respect. I admit, as I matured as both a writer and a person, I began to value content more than presentation and thus fear that such digitized masturbation could come off as more irritating than dazzling.

Regardless, italics and bold are recognized by the mainstream as acceptable methods for conveying deeper meaning, but the former is much more utilized than the latter. Bold, however, made a triumphant comeback in the works of Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and brilliant political writer who often emboldens the key passages of his essays to draw attention to an incendiary quote, a key fact, or a bold conclusion (for instance, when quoting Teddy Roosevelt, Greenwald will do such: “‘No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.’”) This brand of writing struck me with its effectiveness, and I decided to utilize it in one of my upcoming writing assignments.

Now time for the paradise: I used the ‘bold’ function for a short essay I wrote for my RA class, EDCP 400, an introductory course to the various responsibilities and nuances of the Resident Assistant position.  The essay encompassed the various life experiences we’ve internalized and how they connected to the learning objectives from a particular class. Simple stuff. I wrote the essay, emphasizing how a high school friendship brought early exposure to these objectives, and even threw in a little jazz trivia to show how John Coltrane also had these objectives in mind during his transcendental career. While I was writing, though, I used the bold function to highlight when I was referencing the specific learning objectives. For example, talking with this high school friend showed me the power of communication.

There was no underlying rhetoric behind the decision; it was merely a method to draw attention to the fact that I was using the objectives properly for the essay.

I got the essay back last week, and here is what a co-instructor of the course, a current RA and English major at Ohio University, wrote in the margins: “Bold not necessary, it mostly just perplexes me, and seems overly dramatic.” Even more, there was a post-it stamped in the upper-right corner of the same page, with this message scribbled across it in blood-red ink: “Don’t bold your shit. Also this is not a creative writing assignment.” It appears I touched on a nerve with my choice of bold, but wait, there’s more! On the last page of the essay, the RA summarized his impressions of the essay, writing, “All in all, an effective essay. It’s good to hear about your personal experiences, and you related them well to the five goals.” So far so good. But then, he wrote, “However, you made some weird stylistic choices with the bold, and (the next two words were crossed out, but the first was definitely “the”) other things.”

This perplexed me for a number of reasons, but the most notable being that the RA had offered, just the week before, praise for the essay! When I entered class last Thursday, he asked, with a strange, quasi-drunken smile on his face, “Peter, what are you majoring in again?”

“Magazine journalism,” I answered, smiling back.

“Oh,” he emitted, “because I read your essay.”

“Really? Did you like it?” a faint nerve punched me in the abdomen.

“It was…interesting,” he said, the same ambiguous smile on his face.

He then complimented my allusions to Coltrane, and we discussed different kinds of jazz for more than five minutes. I thought I was crafting some kind of rapport with this RA. Clearly, he had dug my essay! And about the jazz—unbeknownst to non-jazz listeners, jazz is one of those things that create an immediate connection between people. Maybe it’s because of its status as an original American art form coupled with its modern-day irrelevance, but when the name “Miles Davis” or “Thelonious Monk” or “Charles Mingus” or “John Coltrane” floats through the air, my ears perk like an Irish wolfhound and I seize on the person speaking. Every time, this results in a grand discussion of beautiful things.

So why the hostility to the bold? What did I do wrong by drawing attention to the connections we were required to make? Again, this seemed to offend the RA in a major, personal manner. After all, why else would he pounce on the ‘bold’ on three separate occasions throughout the course of a three-and-a-half page essay? Why would he feel so strongly about the ‘bold’ that he would specifically put a post-it on a page, further emphasizing his disdain for the ‘bold’? (I should mention that the post-it was yellow; quite bold, eh?)

I do have one hypothesis: the “major syndrome,” the side effect of having a pronounced, certified major of unquestionable acceptance and personal connection, leading to absolute denunciation of any outside opinion. History majors, for example, will argue with me that the Founding Fathers were nothing more than rich white guys trying to maintain their wealth through radical revolution.

Despite the fact that I correctly point out that no, the Founding Fathers were, if anything, middle class (land was very inexpensive at the time, and the upper class were the British loyalists who fled their lands), and no, the fathers would not start a revolution to maintain wealth as revolution itself was reason for treason, and such actions led the founders to flee their homes for safety (some lost their homes from fire and a few lost their entire families), and no, the fathers were not maintaining their wealth in post-revolution America because the Constitution Convention shows middle-class men betraying their social class in attempts to create an egalitarian society (Madison’s notes show this).

“But no!” history majors will tell me, “you are wrong! We’re history majors!” The “major syndrome,” therefore, grants unwarranted superiority to people of disparate fields. If we believed this to be true, than Art Laffer, mastermind of the disastrous “Reaganomics” economic model, would be a genius; he does, after all, have a PhD in economics from Stanford.

This is a fairly roundabout way of explaining that the use of bold was probably beyond the element of this RA, himself an English major. A victim of the English ‘major’ syndrome will freely and frivolously correct your grammar, often jutting in and remarking how “Daniel and I” went to the store, not “Me and Daniel.” They will correct minute details in syntax and vocabulary, remarking how you were “sardonic,” not “sarcastic.” So, the “major syndrome” dictates that I do not have the kind of expertise in English and writing that the RA must have; therefore, I am wrong, and I will never, EVER, use bold again!