How do you feel about italics?

I think that began as strictly a text message thing, and then people started using it in real-world context, and eventually even in self-pubbed stories. A mark of the degeneration of our language and culture in these postmodern times.

 

My dinosaur is fucking your wife.

My dinosaur is fucking your wife.

My dinosaur is fucking your wife.

My dinosaur is fucking your wife.

You need a new wife.

 

I did actually use italics in my current WIP. The main character is a young boy, In his thoughts he was hearing his mothers voice. It was the mothers voice I put in Italics, for her reminders of his manners. It minimized the usage, but set those thoughts apart for the rest for clarity.

 

I love a one-word sentences. I actually do this all the time. And I've published (not self-published) a bunch of stories using this technique. It's something I do way more than I use italics.​

 

xkcd: Quotative Like

 

I hate that crap too. The periods after every word drive me nuts. We get it. The words are naked on the street screaming for attention. Please, put those away! For the children's sake!

However, I do somewhat enjoy Herbert's use of italics in Dune for internal struggle. So much of the novel is thought instead of put into conversation. You just begin to read it as in a different plane and it works for me.

 

There are a couple (ahem) thoughts on the matter here:

https://www.writingforums.org/threads/italics-for-thoughts.32989/

 

Yeah, I'm quoting myself, but...

I was curious about that Benet story, and found it on the internet. The name of it is "By the Waters of Babylon," and I just re-read it and found it to be as powerful now as when I first read it some sixty years ago:

[link deleted]

It's a masterful telling by a masterful writer, and it may be worth noting that I found it in a English-class schoolbook. That was the type of stuff they gave us to read. I haven't seen a schoolbook in years, but I wonder if the students these days get such high-calorie reading matter.

I discovered Kurt Vonnegut in another such book:

[link deleted]

Vonnegut used italics, but sparingly, mainly to indicate quoted material.

 

There are times when italics are the correct format to use:

- titles of creative works or publication names (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet)
- foreign words in English text (His gato is my cat.)
- scientific names of organisms (Homo sapiens)
- to specify words used as themselves (She uses the word very too much.)
- vessel names (NASA's Challenger)

And then whether a word should be italicized for emphasis is up to the writer.

 

My apologies. I had thought that when these works appear on those sites, the author or author's estate had given permission. I'm surprised that those entities don't police the web sites more aggressively to prevent copyright violations.

 

Wow, a lot of passion(?) in that thread.

 

Some writers and readers appreciate the use of italics for emphasis or to indicate internal thoughts in first-person narratives, as it can help convey tone or differentiate between different types of text within a passage. Italics can be useful in adding emphasis or drawing attention to particular words or phrases, which can enhance the reader's understanding or experience of the text.

 

As a reader I find italics a distraction.

 

Aside from the default grammatical uses, I use italics to differentiate between conversations with different tones [for example, a whisper-yelled conversation between two parties] and for emphasis on certain words.

 

I like it for emphasizing a word - like - you did what?!
Other than that I'm not a huge fan. I especially hate it when it's used for prologues or used in chapters to differentiate between past and present. A lot of horrors used to do that - drove me nuts.

 

Italics are a bother, to me. I would rather not modify how letters of the text are printed, I want to write well enough and use punctuation well enough to not become dependent on modifications like italics, or bolding, for that matter. With saying that, I still won't be critical of others using italics, or bolding the letters of words, to a limited extent in more appropriate places in their writing.

 

Like so many other tools in life, the tool itself is not the problem. It is how the tool is used. Italics, bolding, and font changes make things stand out to the reader. As writers the questions we need to be asking are why does this need to stand out? Are we doing it to show something a character is reading, thus making it stand out from the narrative flow? Or is it a key item in a developing plot that needs to stand out to the reader? Or is it to make a specific character stand out as different from the rest, such as Death speaking in all caps in the discworld novels? As a reader I find these can easily be distracting, if the purpose isn't immediately apparent.
Like so many other things, this is a choice of the author. And like many other choices, how well considered the choice is, determines to a large degree if it works or not in the story.

 

It is just my preference, in which I don't include others, those who write should write in their own fashion, yet I would work at sharpening my writing ability. I just don't use bolding or italicizing of any of the text in my works of writing, though I use capitalization often. In discussion online I might, still, in emphasizing something in communication with others, so I see when I might do that. But the works of writing from me never seem to need that, so I don't include those in what I consider for making the writing yet better.

 

The story I'm currently writing centers around a Ph.D. student who at one point states the title of his dissertation. According to most outlets, you use quotes to reference short articles, stories, lectures, etc., and you use italics for longer works, such as novels, etc. So, I put his title in quotes. In my first book, however, I wrote something like... "The Byzantine warrior sat atop his steed in a horrifying suit of black armor. The helmet he wore looked like something a wraith would have donned in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings."

I know that's picky, but if you're a professional writer, it's the nuances like this that add up. And God, i know!! I really let my inner nerd run wild in that first book! lol.

 

I'm OK with italics. Honestly, I don't even notice. The idea of using italics makes me sad, though.

Learn from them, collaborate with them, celebrate them, but don't use them. Italics have feelings. Like all nationalities we are all beautiful individuals.

Hug an italic today.

 

For a less flippant thought, stylistic rules have a place. Consistency probably has nearly the importance, and style is subject to fad.

Back in my day (am I really that old?), grade points drowned in red ink for things like failing to put two spaces after every period. One space, please, but it was once a matter of scorn to fail the second space.

"You and I" was always the only form. "You and me" was always considered bad grammar.

I try to obey the rules, but it's probably OK to remember the prime directive is to communicate.