Well, I was tempted to restate my strong opinion on the subject ...then thought ...nah. Actually, I looked back and discovered the person who revived it is a new forum member. It IS an issue that concerns writers. The fact that we've all hacked it to death, drawn lines, dug holes, and created campaign manifestoes doesn't mean the topic isn't of interest to new forum members. There is nothing more off-putting to a new member than to contribute to an interesting and pertinent thread, only to be told it's OLD and they should have left it alone, simply because many of us are tired of hitting our heads against a brick wall discussing the issue.
I have. I started out accepting the claim that one should take the italics out of a manuscript submission. Then I shifted to concluding italics for inner monologue was well on its way to becoming the norm. And finally I began to question the assertion publishers care. There could be an archaic holdout or two who are gatekeepers at some publishing houses. After all there are several people in this thread alone who find italics for inner monologue to be a sign of incompetence. But we've not seen any actual evidence in this thread that rejection out of hand of manuscripts that use italics for inner monologue occurs at major (or minor) publishing houses. Show me the evidence. So far, I've not seen anything but assertions and the fact the CMoS doesn't list inner monologue as a proper use of italics.
It's a perennial topic of discussion on writing forums. Seems like it is easily resolved through empirical evidence. Always surprising that the body of work on the book store shelves isn't given any weight by some. It's a bit of an intersection between academic theorizing and the real evidence of what gets published. I'm sure you haven't seen the last of it - brace yourself
One of the longest and angriest forum threads I ever read was about whether the custom of "shoes off when entering the house", when applied to guests, is obviously vital to the universe, or a violation of all laws of God and man. One of the others was about whether leaving one's grocery cart in the parking lot rather than returning it to a cart corral is a crime against humanity. There's no predicting.
There have been more than 680 posts in this thread. Does anybody really have anything to say about this topic that hasn't already been said?
It's a sticky thread for the very reason new people to the forum often revisit the issue. If not one sticky thread we'd likely have a new italics thread every month.
The thread is stickied so new members will know the question has already been asked and answered. Now the question is why people keep asking the same things in this thread that has already been said/explained dozens of times in the past 27 pages? Why not just read the thread? Surely there can't be a single thing about this issue that hasn't been covered so far?
Someone should keep the thread sticky, but lock it. As a newb who may have inadvertently caused trouble by replying to a dead-horse thread, I'd say it's a bit absurd to expect a person to hold off the urge to comment until he's read through 28 pages of responses to make sure no one else has already made his point. Just lock it with a final message that reads something along the lines of: "This thread has been discussed to the fullest with which it can be discussed. Those interested in reading about how to use italics may continue to do so, but no more posts can be made." Problem solved.
I don't really expect anyone to actually be crazy enough (like me) to read the full thread. You can either just scan through the posts looking for something relevant, or use the search function to search through the thread. I'd actually forgotten about the locking function... However, doing it could lead to more threads on the subject since some people still won't have the energy to read/look through this beast of a discussion.
Does it really matter? Anyone who doesn't want to read what new people are posting doesn't have to click on the thread.
Do what you will with your own writing. The future of your writing career is in your own hands, and any decisions you make on any writing issue - italics or otherwise - is your decision. All anyone on this forum can do is voice their opinions based on their own experience, or through referencing others experience. At the end of the day, all you can do is read the opinions that have already bee stated and decide, for yourself, whether a certain practice will work for you, or whether it's something that will help, hinder, or play no role on the road to meeting your end goal, whatever those may be.
Warning: crazy contemplating-the-Universe philosophical discourse ahead, and it has very little to do with italics for inner monologue. I beg to differ. There is a real world out there. We experience it through our senses which work as filters, sometimes to our benefit, sometimes to our disadvantage. But the bottom line is, there are more effective and less effective ways to determine what the truth is. From what you've said, it sounds like you think reality is just what we imagine it to be, as if it's all in our heads, Matrix-like. It's not about opinion, it's about the evidence.
Considering this lengthy discussion, I don't get how Cormac McCarthy could get away with his books that lack quotation marks and other punctuation. Kind of dispels the notion of "standard", doesn't it?
And McCarthy wasn't the first to do that. Good ol' James Joyce was doing it back in the day. And even he probably wasn't the first - he's just the first I know about.
I guess it's beside the point. He might as well, it would fit him. What I'm trying to say is that some of us here propose no italics at all for thoughts while some guys-authors don't give a flying f*** about proper formatting. It's great I'm more erudite than before on italics but my question is how come? I guess their publishers wanted to do something crazy just for the hack of it. Go against conventions.
