Italics for thoughts?

Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by Dan Rhodenizer, Jul 25, 2007.

  1. kedrowss

    kedrowss New Member

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    Stephen King uses italics for thoughts. Lots of authors do. When it comes to fiction writing, the most important standard is what will convey your intention without drawing too much attention to itself. If the italics are used in such a way that your readers will know immediately what you're trying to do, and they seem less awkward than "she thought" and "he thought" over and over, then I'd say use them.
     
  2. Lyssaur

    Lyssaur New Member

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    Whither it is "right" or "wrong" to use italics for though doesn't really matter. Well-written authors and poets have poetic licence to use italics wherever they see fit. The use of italics, among countless other grammatical rules, are broken constantly.

    ...This is not to say that that Victorian girl has the poetic licence to do so. That will depend upon the integrity of the rest of her writing and how tight her grasp is on grammatical knowledge. As far as I'm concerned, taking in the girth of this controversy, write it however it will best suit the story. Should your publisher tell you it's wrong, fix it. No big deal.
     
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  3. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I liked Magic's Pawn well enough, but I agree the syntax was more difficult than it needed to be. I didn't read any other books in the series.
     
  4. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Precisely my point.

    I've read Mercedes Lackey before and liked her work. I was disappointed that there should be this distraction to the enjoyment of this book.
     
  5. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But if your publisher takes one look at your nonstandard formatting and drops your book in the reject pile, then it is a big deal.

    Published authors that have publishers and agents chasing them around can do what they want, to some extent.

    My understanding is that a screener picking up an unpublished author's manuscript is not thinking, "Let's give this work all the time that's needed to complete an in-depth analysis of the good and bad points." They have too many manuscripts to even consider a policy like that.

    They are, instead, looking for a reason to reject it so that they can go on to the next manuscript in the teetering pile that threatens to swallow their office. So giving them a nice shiny reason for rejection, in the form of nonstandard formatting, strikes me as a bad idea.
     
  6. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    your understanding is correct, cf!
     
  7. Naiyn

    Naiyn New Member

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    I can say with certainty that I came to the right place for help in my writing. I always thought that thoughts in italics were standard simply cause a lot the books I read use that format, and so the novel I'm working on has italics all over the place.

    After reading through most of this thread, I started editing my work and changing how I do character thoughts. Not only is my writing better (at least I think so), but I always hated stopping what I'm writing to go and hit that stupid italic button.
     
  8. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    kudos to you!... keep up the good work...

    love and hugs, maia
     
  9. viktor

    viktor New Member

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    Classic discussion. I echo what Naiyn has to say.

    I am curious about one thing: how would we know if there was an official change from the normal form to the italicised one? I'd hate to get caught out if industry standards changed.
     
  10. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    As in any profession, you have to stay current. That includes watching publisher websites and blogs, and getting the newest editions of writing and style guides. The Chicago Manual of Style is not exclusively for fiction writers, but focuses more on journalism. Nevertheless, it is about the most comprehensive style guide available for US writing standards.

    You can be sure that a change in the acceptability of italics for thought will have a lengthy transitional period, during which both styles will be acceptable to most publishers. But you can be prepared by using a named style for literal thoughts in your manuscript. Named styles in a word processing program like Microsoft Word allow you to change how a particular kind of text is rendered throughout a document from a central control point.

    My manuscript template has a named style called Internal dialogue, which is defined by default to normal text. But if I wish to submit to a publisher who prefers italicized thoughts, I can modify the style to render it in italics, and it will instantly change for every string of text in my manuscript I have marked with that style. If I simply want to easily find everywhere I have internal thoughts marked, I can make the style bold red.
     
  11. viktor

    viktor New Member

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    Cheers Cogito, that answers my question fine.
     
  12. Chancery_Stone

    Chancery_Stone New Member

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    Italics are only a font style, not a commandment from Moses

    Cogito is altogether too hidebound in his attitudes to the use of italics. Disregarding how popular authors use italics because it is "incorrect" is as insane as ignoring changes to submission guidelines or denouncing changes in vampire lore because they are simply fashionable. These things are as influential on the publishing industry and, by osmosis, writing, as economics and new technology, and they impact far more, and are more persuasive, than something as transitory as "standards".

    Grammar and punctuation has a purpose, yes, but it is not static. In fiction it is essential that it remain fluid, and that creative writers are free to create without the grammar police attempting to write off whole genres of writing and writers because they have lowered some mythical "standard".

    Yes, sloppy writers break grammar rules, but so do professionals. Some of the most brilliant authors break rules right, left and centre. Breaking rules is not symptomatic of being a 'bad writer' but merely symptomatic of breaking rules.

    Putting thoughts in italics is 'correct' if it works, i.e. if it gets across most effectively how your story needs to be told. That would include it being 'easy' for the reader to use, in that it isn't pulling him out of your story because he is fighting through a forest of italicised text. Likewise, if you want not a whiff of italics in your writing, that too is your privilege, as long as you make it work.

    The use of italics is not about being right or wrong, or not offending Lynn Truss or your primary school teacher, but about conveying the strongest story you can - whatever that takes.
     
  13. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    whether or not it's 'correct' according to this or that 'authority' or is being done often enough to have made it 'acceptable' to some, the fact remains that good writers don't have to resort to fancy fontery to let their readers know when a character is thinking...
     
  14. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But it sounds like the standard, right now, is against using italics for thoughts.

    If you found a publisher and he said, "It's great! We'll take it! Oh, but you need to stop using italics for thoughts," would you say, "Well, forget it, then, you can't publish my book."?

    If so, then, yes, absolutely use italics for thoughts. If that choice is more important than getting published, then that's your choice. And I'm not being sarcastic - while I can't get my own mind around the author's preferences in the use of italics being a dealbreaker for that author, I can certainly imagine all sorts of other publisher demands that could be dealbreakers.

    But if it's _not_ more important than getting published, then is it worth taking the risk of getting your manuscript rejected over it? I've read many times that screeners start out looking for a reason to reject, often on the first page, first paragraph, or first line, and I'd bet that failure to follow standards may be one of those reasons.

    Yes, in a fair world your work wouldn't get rejected due to minor formatting preferences. Maybe in a fair world, the screener would read a bunch of chapters until they could say, "_Ohhhh_, I see why the italics work here!" But, again, is the fact that we don't live in that particular world worth getting rejected over? There are no doubt a lot of things I would refuse to change in order to get published, but a typography choice is, for me, not one of them. I would follow the standards.

    ChickenFreak
     
  15. Chancery_Stone

    Chancery_Stone New Member

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    Italics are not "fancy fontery", they have been around as long as type, and are no more or less valid than any other font. Their use does not denote either intelligence or stupidity; good writing or bad. 'Good writers' use italics just as much, and in the same ways, as bad writers. It is talent and skill that differentiates good writing from bad, not snobbery about typefaces.

    ChickenFreak, I'm not sure where this terror of publishers rejecting you for italics comes from. Are we talking about ITALICS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? Have you ever seen publishers' submission guidelines saying, "Absolutely NO italics!" I haven't seen any mentioning them, let alone forbidding them.

    If, and it's a big if, you started a novel with the first four pages in italics I'd suggest you thought about that very carefully. Not because I think publishers are prejudiced against italics but because no-one would enjoy trying to read four pages of italics. As a general rule, a character will only have occasional thoughts. If your whole novel is interior monologue then why would you put it in italics? There's no need. If half the novel is monologue thoughts, again, surely you could alternate voices and that would be perfectly comprehensible, without the needs for italics. There are always creative options.

    The italics versus straight text only becomes a problem where isolated thoughts occur, usually with no shift to indicate the change. Here italics are an ideal solution. But they can become problematic again if there's paragraphs popping up right left and centre. Ultimately the decision is yours.

    Like anyone else, publishers like to be able to read stuff easily. If italics make it easier and you retain the integrity of your work, then go that road. If italics are making things more complicated, why would you use them?
    You might be very unlucky to hit a publisher who is very cranky about italics, but I would suggest you don't want a publisher like that anyway. If he's that easily upset it won't be long before he's dictating to you about stuff that really matters.
     
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  16. Vacuum Eater

    Vacuum Eater New Member

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    I empathize with you. When I'm low on reading material, I will sometimes turn to fan fiction, a realm in which examples of the horrors of italics abuse abound. Entire dream sequences, flashbacks, paragraphs of thought - all written in italics! Of note, many fan fiction authors that abuse italics tend to be poor writers overall; thus, I have come to the conclusion that italics abuse is often (but not always) a marker of an amateur.

    Not only are italics hard to read, they are also very distracting, and (to me) fall into the same category as thesaurus abuse. The purpose of italics is, by its very nature, to draw attention. When a tool for indicating special emphasis is overused, it loses the special part and instead become irritating.

    The uses of italics, as far as I'm concerned.
     
  17. Chancery_Stone

    Chancery_Stone New Member

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    The chicken or the egg?

    Yes, but are they bad writers because they 'abuse' italics, or do they abuse italics because they are bad writers?
     
  18. Vacuum Eater

    Vacuum Eater New Member

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    The later. Italics abuse in itself does not automatically make someone a bad writer. Sometimes, even above-average writers produce italics-ridden works, probably in the name of artistic expression and being unique. The end result is hard on the eyes and distracting, as I mentioned in my previous post.
     
  19. erader2

    erader2 New Member

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    I guess I'm just not that judgmental when it comes to stuff like this. If italics is the clearest way for the author to portray a character's thought it wouldn't bother me at all as long as it's not every other sentence. I don't think I ever have, or ever will, judge an author thinking "oh man, did you see how he/she made me think it was the character thinking? He/She is certainly an elite writer, following the standard rules like that!" The only way it could possibly bother me is if its too much and actually hurts my eyes to read.

    One of the biggest reasons I like writing so much is because you don't have to follow any rules but your own. I can't remember what Vonnegut book it is but he uses the actual numerical symbol instead of writing out the word and I can't honestly say it bothered me.
     
  20. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    You can write anything you want, but if you want to get published, of course there are rules you have to follow.
     
  21. Redwritinghood

    Redwritinghood New Member

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    In defense of italics

    I don't mean to be offensive to anyone, but I have noticed that there is a certain know-it-all attitude that goes along with telling anyone definitively that "italic use for thoughts is wrong". I have heard it, but only a certain kind of person has declared it verboten.

    I submit to you all what I found after grabbing some of my favorite fiction books off my shelf to see if I had imagined that there was indeed a convention, time honored, for using italics to represent the thoughts of the POV character, in the present moment of the scene.

    All of these authors use italics as thoughts (among all the other traditional uses).
    Robert Jordan - Wheel of time
    George R.R. Martin - Game of Thrones etc.
    Robin Hobb - Various fantasy novels I very much enjoy
    Suzanne Collins -Hunger Games (though she ads additional "...,I thought" which I find redundant)
    JK Rowling - Harry Potter (same use as Collins, so maybe that is more common for YA or younger)
    Dan Simmons - Hyperion series, Illium etc
    Neil Gaiman - Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods etc.

    So my takeaway is that it is a totally acceptable practice that's alive and well in fiction at least. I really prefer it. (To me, the alternative is a little like stream-of-consciousness or poetry without punctuation of any kind. Sure you CAN figure it out, but punctuation is another little code to helps the reader understand how something is meant to be read.)

    For my writing, thoughts are a bit like private dialog: in present tense, whereas everything else (except dialog) is in past tense. Italics help me, as a reader, to understand that the author's tense didn't mysteriously change on me, but the POV character is having a thought that presently relates to the scene. I find this:
    1. Immediate
    2. quicker and cleaner than ...., he thought. or ....., I wondered to myself.
    3. To me, less confusing than changing up tense in the narration that otherwise looks just like all the other narration.
    4. More standard with the best selling authors that I read, so it feels comfortable to me, and I infer, to at least several hundred million people.

    Reliance on how-to-write books is in itself, the mark of an amateur just as much as copying a strange convention that only one author used in that book that everyone liked. I agree with many of the posters here that it depends on the writing, not overusing it, not using it in blocks etc. But I absolutely reject the notion that using italics as thoughts will brand anyone as a bad writer or will get you rejected by publishers en masse. That is the only claim in here that is unsourced and not backed up in provable reality.
    Go to a book store. Look around.
    Maybe it is the new convention.
    The real question is how to use it artfully and not overdo it.

    I consider the list above to be a more authoritative list of experts than anyone who ever wrote a style guide, and consider that a well recieved practice that has withstood the test of more that 25 years, might not just be a short term trend, but what's happening today.
     
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  22. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    What you see in published books is NOT good advice for manuscript. Publishers make decisions for the published work that are contrary to good practice for writers. Now you may end up submitting to a publisher, or more accurately to a submissions editor, who doesn't give a crap. But you are also very likely to get a submissions editor who sees the misuse of italics for exactly what it is: an attempt to disguise or minimize the impact of sloppy writing.

    And by the way, style guides are written by guess whom: the very same editors who accept or reject submissions.

    One more thing: You know what you can do with your characterization of the people who advise not to use italics for thoughts. That is an offensive ad hominem attack, completely forbidden on this site.
     
  23. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    ditto all of cog's remarks...

    what you see in books is not necessarily what you would have seen in the mss that were submitted to agents and publishers... and if you want to maximize your chancs of snagging both, you'd be wise to use italics only for foreign words and occasional emphasis of a word that really needs to be stressed... and, for those occasions, to not use the actual italics, but only underline what you want to see that way in print...

    btw, most of those books mentioned were written by well-published authors who could do whatever they wished...
     
  24. Redwritinghood

    Redwritinghood New Member

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    Circular argument

    I do not mean to offend you and I never mentioned you. I was stating an observation based on several forums about the way in which most of the "absolutely never is it okay to use italics to indicate thought..." camp come across. If you feel like that represents yourself, then I'm sorry.
    Since you draw attention to yourself, in looking back, a good many of your posts seem a bit heavy handed and I think your logic contradicts itself. You say that use of italics for thoughts is wrong in all cases. Then when many people on this blog site examples of where it was used to excellent effect (as measured by book sales, popularity, notoriety, people paying millions of dollars for the film rights to said books--which is still in the realm of personal taste.) you then state (based, as far as I can tell, purely on assumption) that somehow the publishers are adding italics to the manuscript, against the will of the author or that authors only begrudgingly agree to it. So in that case, what, the author wrote the exact same thing but without the italics? Or did they write lots of "...I thought" in the MS? (Is this really true or is this imagination?)
    But then you go on to tell us that we shouldn't use italics because the same culprits who added all those nasty italics in the first place, would actually reject them out of hand if other writers handed in a MS with the italics.......

    You have spun your argument in a full circle and at the end of the day, there are still thousands of example of novels, published, purchased, enjoyed, and praised that use the technique of italicized thoughts in the narration.
    You still have to face the fact that it is done, it is accepted, and it shouldn't be a real inhibition to your story if it is done artfully. (Just like deep 3rd POV without italics, which can just be a jumble of tense shifts and author intrusion if not done very carefully. The difference is, there are no italics to simplify WTF the author is trying to convey to the reader if it isn't done perfectly.)

    I personally don't use italic thoughts to draw attention as much as to delineate. Some people find italics annoying to look at, but I find the sudden tense shifts without italics to be more annoying because they can sneak up on me.

    So, again sorry if you thought I was singling you out, but I might have checked this blog out after already reading another bunch of people who were dishing out "absolute facts" that aren't fully supported by reality. And in some cases, you did sound a bit arrogant to other posters who merely pointed out that you are expressing an opinion and not an actual singular fact.

    To be honest, I wish there was another device other than italics that was acceptable and did the same thing. I think Italics are used for way too many different things, but just you try to bold anything and the style police will kick down your door. Somehow these things evolve over time and I don't know if we're evolving towards italicized thoughts or if we were comfortably there and now that is less in style. But it's happening in what I read, so it has influenced my style, but I can respect the variations that use the other methods if done well.
     
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  25. thirdwind

    thirdwind Member Contest Administrator Reviewer Contributor

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    Below is what I wrote on the matter in another thread. I still haven't come across any authoritative source.

     

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