Staccato highlighting

I’ve been reading for school for the past two hours, and I’m having a hard time focusing. Not because there are 15 other things I need to get done today. Not because I’m dozing off. No. I’m having a hard time focusing because they former owner of the book was troubled.

I purchased the book used online through Amazon, risking the inevitable dog-ear, some highlighting and the occasional annotating. But I’m OK with that if it saves me money. This particular book is no different. It has all of these things, except, when it comes to highlighting, it is unique. So unique. Instead of highlighting by the line, this person highlighted by the word. As in:

Such HIGHLIGHT sacralization HIGHLGIHT of HIGHLIGHT cultural HIGHLIGHT identity HIGHLIGHT is HIGHLIGHT invaluable HIGHLIGHT for HIGHLIGHT the HIGHLIGHT parties HIGHLIGHT in HIGHLIGHT conflict HIGHLIGHT because HIGHLIGHT it HIGHLIGHT can HIGHLIGHT transmute HIGHLIGHT what HIGHLIGHT is HIGHLIGHT in HIGHLIGHT fact HIGHLIGHT a HIGHLIGHT murder HIGHLIGHT into HIGHLIGHT an HIGHLIGHT act HIGHLIGHT of HIGHLIGHT piety HIGHLIGHT.

This absolutely cannot save time. Lift highlighter, lower highlighter. Lift. Lower. Lift. Lower. Lift. Lower. Rather than dowwwwnnnnnn lift dowwwwwwwnnnnnnnn lift.

Nevertheless, if you don’t care about wasting the time and still choose to highlight by the word, why oh why highlight “of” and “a” and “an” and “of” again?

The words started turning into notes for me. I kept thinking of my piano teacher tap tap tapping her fingers on the piano next to me as I learned to play a piece “staccato.” The notes were to be short, detached, quick. Rapid-fire.

I know the author of this book didn’t write his words to be detached, and yet the former owner of the book transformed them into a staccato piece of music. INTO. AN. ACT. OF. PIETY. And notice how staccato is rarely quiet? Rapid-fire is not quiet. So the former owner now has the author yelling at me!

The sentence "Such sacralization of cultural identity is invaluable for the parties in conflict because it can transmute what is in fact a murder into an act of piety." does not need any further complications. It requires all of my focus to decipher on its own. So, you former owner you, I wonder if you knew this and just thought you’d be funny and staccato highlight throughout? Did you want people to not know what they were reading because they were too uncomfortable with the author yelling at them? Or did you want the reader to wonder what the heck was wrong with you instead of paying attention? Whatever you were thinking, not cool.