27 JUNE 1970, Page 23

Italicop hob i a

Sir: Strix's delightful italicophil notes on halicophobia ('Spectator's notebook', 20 June), remind me of my childhood when, while writing something about the discovery of Mycenae by his famous fellow- archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, my father told me the German (later American) scholar's view about over-italicisation. If remember correctly, Schliemann considered authors who used italics (in his case Kursiv) frequently for emphasis as people who inadvertently admitted that the rest of their writing was not worth reading.