I sorta skipped to the end, so apologies if someone said this. In one of his lectures, Brandon Sanderson talked about italics. Italics for thought are older than plain text, its just that people didn't used to use italics, but quotes. I will give examples. Once upon a time, thought's would be presented as such: Her faced twisted and she pulled away from the dress. "What a horrible shade of green," she thought. Then, as differentiation between dialogue and thoughts grew necessary, that sort of sentence became: Her faced twisted and she pulled away from the dress. 'What a horrible shade of green,' she thought. (Double quotations became prominent in the US, for use in dialogue) Then italics arrived, and thought tags were dropped: Her faced twisted and she pulled away from the dress. What a horrible shade of green. A new style (Relatively new), rose until it became the prominent usage in the current market: Her faced twisted and she pulled away from the dress. Horrible shade of green. You can use either italics, or none italics. I've seen manuscripts where there was a mix of both. Just know that too many italicized words bother many people, so if you plan to have a novel with many thoughts, such as in many first person novels, I'd advise against italics. Additional note: If you plan on having first person thoughts in a third person novel, use italics. Only experienced authors should attempt switching point-of-view types mid-paragraph. You'll know you're experienced when you have an editor with whom to consult.
Hi @Vofzolne, welcome to the forum. I wasn't familiar with Brandon Sanderson so I looked him up. Sounds like it was a good lecture to attend. Thanks for sharing your notes.
Sanderson used to put up YouTube videos of the creating writing class he teaches at BYU. I think they're still there.
"Gotten away with it" is not an accurate description. Many people use the convention, many sources recommend the convention, some style guides like the CMoS do not list internal monologue as a use of italics. Lots of authors use the convention. Some people claimed it was a sign of poor skill. They were unable to back that up with evidence. Some claimed publishers would reject manuscripts using italics for thoughts. No evidence backed that up either. Some people clearly are annoyed reading italicized thoughts and no doubt that might include individual agents and/or publishers. Lots of well known authors use the convention and that has been backed up with evidence.
While I think your argument makes sense about the colored text, there are designated uses for italicized text. So it's not completely true that it's not a grammar issue. In other words, the evidence.
But these aren't really absolute rules, they are more or less guidelines. Some of these guidelines are pretty much universally agreed upon, such as italics for emphasis, italics for ship names. Others, such as whether to use quotes or italics for titles, are slightly more split. And whether or not to use italics for thoughts is the subject so contentious it has spawned a 32 page thread. Guidelines are not rules, but some guidelines are so universally agreed upon that they are basically indistinguishable from rules ... this is not one of them.
Nothing in writing is an absolute rule. But there are some rules that are accepted standards, and some that are common conventions. If there weren't, the aspect of writing that is communication would suffer. Can you imagine if grammar rules were nonexistent?
Again, when to underline and when to use italics are just as important when it comes to grammar rules as when to use quotation marks. This can be demonstrated by looking at dozens of sources of grammar rules. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/italics.htm You will not find similar rules about when to use comic sans or red colored font. @Void had an interesting hypothesis but it's just not correct. That's if you look at the opinions in the thread. If you look at what was or was not backed up with evidence, you see a different picture.
There are a few style references that don't mention using italics for thoughts. But I've not yet found one that said, 'do not do it'. The CMoS is the most respected style guide that leaves out italics for inner monologue in it's list of accepted reasons to use italics. No one here has denied that. On the other hand, many well respected style guides note that italics for thoughts are a reasonable even recommended option. Those references have been cited in this thread. By the same token a couple of style guides say to use quotes for thoughts the same way one uses them for dialogue. But the majority of guides say never use quotes for thoughts because it confuses the reader whether the thought was spoken aloud or not. It comes down to deciding what makes it more clear to the reader. The naysayers here claim it's a crutch. That's ludicrous. Anyone can add a tag, 'she thought'. There's no special skill in that. My novel is first person past tense narrative. I use direct thoughts the same way my narrator repeats direct dialogue. In my case italics for thoughts works well. Quotes are out of the question since my character also talks to herself a lot. Using tags to say which are thoughts and which are spoken and what is narration is senseless when italics works so much better. Now, if you have paragraphs or pages of inner monologue, pages of italics are indeed distracting. In such a case I would not choose to use them. Getting back to the evidence, while many style guides recommend italics, none say not to use them. Another argument was made that publishers might toss your manuscript if you use italics for thoughts. But not one publisher guideline was cited that said not to use italics for thoughts and many published novels were cited that had italicized thoughts in them. No one is telling you that you have to use them. Of course you don't. The point is the claims that one should not use italicized thoughts have been seriously exaggerated in this thread.
I have seen guides state that thoughts should be blended into the narrative, and that italics might become a little of a crutch that results in bad technique, or become confusing through over-use if your character does a lot of thinking (or has an extended dream sequence). But this seems to be more of a warning, than some sort of an accepted rule. I'm not sure which guides, but I've certainly read this before. Personally I have no problem with them for thoughts.
Great. When you can cite one, let us know. I went to great lengths to look at style guides so I speak from the evidence. If there is evidence I missed (and I'm sure there is) I would be happy to look at it. But without a citation, all we have is your memory and nothing to evaluate the strength or specifics of the recommendation.
No, as I said, "I'm not sure which guides, but I've certainly read this before." I wasn't disagreeing with you, but if you are going to take this as such then I must admit that I have not researched this subject at length or taken copious records of the resources I used. If this were a thesis I'd be on all sorts of bother.
I'm happy to consider disagreement. I'm fine with your mentioning your recollection. The whole point of this thread is to examine the issue. I've been accused of looking to support my original position. In truth I came to this discussion wanting to learn, just as I began writing a few years ago with the goal of learning how to write. When this thread started I was willing to believe one should not use italics for thoughts when submitting a manuscript. Since then I've changed my opinion, based on the evidence that such a concern was not supported by the evidence. So any evidence pro or con is worth looking at. But without a citation we can't evaluate it. We don't know what you actually read. We know what you recall reading. But it could have been a comment on using paragraphs or pages of italicized thoughts. And the idea skill was involved, that also depends on the specific reference, how it was worded. That's all I'm saying. Evidence is what matters, and once that is second and third hand, it becomes fuzzier.
Alas I have no idea (moved country recently and all my books ended up in a charity shop before I left). I am obviously also paraphrasing so it might be that I picked up the shit end of the stick. But from recollection, the point was in no way that they shouldn't be used, just that they shouldn't be used to excess; or that they shouldn't become a tool that enables crap writing i.e. by identifying a thought and thus removing any onus upon the author to do so through the narrative.
Thank you for clarifying. I'm not sure I understand though, what is "a crutch" and what is simply crappy writing.
As I remember it the point was that the flow of the narrative shouldn't be interrupted unnecessarily by italics or tags. The idea was also expressed that the use of italics might result in a writer pulling a thought out of the narrative rather like they might with dialogue in speech marks.
Hard to make sense of that. If a narrator relates dialogue or thoughts, how does that pull the reader out of the narrative?
I feel the need to say, one more time, that a writer doesn't have to choose between italics or a thought tag. Much of the time--in fact, I'd say most of the time--neither italics or a thought tag are needed.
So a narrator is describing the scene in past tense, present tense dialogue is identified by quotes. Why bother with the quotes? Surely it will be clear by the text this is dialogue.
But either or both CAN be used at any time. Nobody is saying you must use them. But they can be used. There is more than one way to convey meaning in creative fiction. An author may have a preferred method, but that doesn't mean other methods aren't valid.
Yes. Well, no. Well, yes. Well, no. Yes, I agree that there are many different ways to get a specific effect. My post was in response to the idea that italics are better than thought tags, as if you have to have one or the other. No, in that I don't consider italics for thoughts valid. A writer that uses them may be a perfectly good writer. Neil Gaiman, for example, is a very good writer, and he uses italics for thoughts, once in a long while--maybe once a chapter, maybe less. If he used 'em more often, I don't think I'd read his books, no matter how good they are, because they annoy me immensely. I very much hope that italics for thought are a fashion that's on its way out. Just like 'seventies clothes.
I said this: Using tags to say which are thoughts and which are spoken and what is narration is senseless when italics works so much better.If you look at the context, I was specifically referring to my novel. Here's the rest of the paragraph: My novel is first person past tense narrative. I use direct thoughts the same way my narrator repeats direct dialogue. In my case italics for thoughts works well. Quotes are out of the question since my character also talks to herself a lot.I also said: I can add tedious tags, or use the italics convention. It works well in my novel to use the italics convention. More than one person in this thread has made the unsupportable assertion that the italics are used in place of skill. At least you are backing off that assertion and acknowledging it's your personal preference rather that other's writing skills. But I'm sure you can see why people are sensitive to the implications someone's writing skill is superior because they don't use italicized thought. Fine, you don't need thought tags, sometimes. To imply this is some special skill is an unsupportable assertion. I don't use dialogue tags sometimes. But most of the time you at least need a minimum number of tags to keep the speakers straight. No one in the thread that I recall has said not using italicized thoughts demonstrated a lack of skill.
Who ever would have thought italics could engender such strong emotions; and when they thought it did they do so in italics?
