The italics used in Bob's post above looked very jagged and broken on my display. I had loaded a fresh version Windows XP onto my new computer a few months ago and this reminded me to see if I had specified CLEAR TYPE for displaying characters on my screen; I hadn't.

If you suffer from the same problem, try going to CONTROL PANEL, DISPLAY, APPEARANCE on your PC and click on EFFECTS. Select CLEAR TYPE rather than STANDARD for screen fonts. Be sure to click APPLY as you exit the Display Properties screen.

As I understand it, this feature was first designed to improve the display of text on LCD screen. However, it makes a great difference on my CRT display as well.