Yes, but that doesn't mean they were always acceptable on submission. As I pointed out earlier (or in another thread, I don't quite remember), how something should be submitted is not necessarily how something will appear in print. I think a lot of people forget that. I actually find that it is not hard to write thoughts, not italicized and without tags. In fact, I find I like doing so, as it is another way to break up stretches of dialogue without a lot of excess wordage.
That's true [MENTION=18415]EdFromNY[/MENTION]. If you were going to use italics for thoughts using the standard manuscript format, you would underline them. However, I think some people are taking the position that italics for thoughts in the final product should never be used, regardless of how they may be presented during the submission process.
No one in this thread has disagreed with using a publisher's convention for any submission. I, myself, have repeated it half a dozen times. As to history, it's not relevant how novel manuscripts were submitted to printers centuries ago. I'm pretty sure some of them were handwritten and the printer set the type. But if one is talking about books printed in the era of the typewriter, before computers, or even after computers but when font codes might not copy from one format to the print type, the internal dialogue ends up in italics somehow. If an author underlines thoughts that are intended to be in italics, that's just a mechanical matter, it's not relevant as to whether the author intends internal dialogue to be in italics. This issue came up earlier and it contains a glaring flaw in the debate over using italics for thoughts. Italics aren't going to be left out of a manuscript and magically appear in the printed book. Who would decide that, the author or the publisher? If you see italics for thought in one of the thousands of books it appears in, the author chose than convention. Whether or not the submitted manuscript indicated italics with underlining or some other means is a moot point in the discussion of whether to use them or not. No one said it was hard, I said it was a preference. What you describe sounds like it works fine when you want to show a character's thought in the middle of dialogue. I'm showing internal dialogue within first person narrative. I could write it without italics, but I can also write it with italics and I like the italics better in my piece. If it was just, use them but show them with underlining in the manuscript, this thread would probably have been about a page long.
True I personally don't use italics to show internal monologue, but if someone else wants to do so I'm fine with it. I've read plenty of authors that do and it hasn't detracted from the work.
[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION] - Yes, I know. My point was not to argue, but only to highlight the fact that how one formats one's ms is not how it ends up in print. I mention this because many posts I see on this forum seem to assume that it is. I know that you know this. I mentioned it for those who may not. My most fervent desire is that the Great Italics Controversy of 2013 may now finally be declared resolved.
Is it just from 2013, [MENTION=18415]EdFromNY[/MENTION]? I joined in 2010 and it seems to me the controversy was raging then as well
one aspect of this issue often overlooked/ignored/fogotten is that a published book you see on a bookstore shelf is not the same thing as a ms by a new and unknown writer that is to be submitted to agents and, subsequently, to publishers... and what has been done by publishers in the process of printing those books is not necessarily what should be done by new and unknown writers in their mss, if they want to maximize their book's chances of being published... while no agent or publisher will object to thoughts not being italicized, some may still mind it being done... so, to maximize one's chances of having a ms accepted by either agent or publisher, why not take the safest route and let italicizing thoughts wait till you have a publisher who prefers or doesn't mind it?... and, in the meantime, why not write well enough that italics aren't needed, for readers to tell when a character is thinking?
I'm not convinced that Pascal's Wager type argument is valid. Have you provided a list of publishers that are bothered by said italics? In all my Web searching of the topic only a small handful of people were against using them. The majority were neutral or suggested the italics as they made it more clear one was reading internal thoughts. We certainly see many currently published books that use them. How can you be certain there isn't a publisher who prefers to see them? And no one in this thread overlooked/ignored/forgot that manuscript submissions should always be tailored to a publisher's guidelines *Glad to see the thread is now a sticky.
You may NEVER KNOW your publisher (more specifically, the submissions editor who gives your excerpt a look) doesn't like italics. All you will know is another submission got rejected. It may just be one factor among many, one tipping point. It doesn't pay to risk annoying the submissions editor, particularly when it's easily avoidable. It's your manuscript, though. Feel free to shoot yourself in the foot.
@Cogito if your agent just sends your manuscript randomly to random publishers, you should change your agent...
IMO, the best narrative writing is that which is completely dependent on the text itself to get across every message necessary.
I'm just wondering: aren't agents and publishers supposed to look for novels that are likely to sell? Or are they that concerned a narrative that at times employs italics would alienate buyers? 'Cause people don't buy books solely based on how the narrative is executed, as we all must have noticed by now. The layman doesn't really pay attention to little hiccups here and there like we do, or even to blatant clunkiness (Twilight, 50 Shades, Eragon, Percy Jackson, even Harry Potters), and I bet everyday readers don't give a flying fluff about italicized thoughts that rarely even interfere with the meat of the novel, be it a steamy affair with a borderline psycho or a fight against dark wizards.
@E. C. Scrubb I agree with your statement: however, it depends a lot on how you define the "Text", doesn't it? Constituents needed to represent the intended message may include more than 25 letters, 10 digits and a dozen punctation marks - they may, and in many forms do include different sets of letters, other forms of numbering and "exotic" uses of standard signs. In some forms they do include italics, lines, pictographs, etc. However the whole argument about "using italics for thoughts" come from both basic misunderstanding of literary text as a concept and from generalized misunderstanding of author-publisher and manuscript-book relations.
You misunderstand. The submissions editor is a person. He or she will have an individual reaction to various elements of the manuscript. You probably won't find a stated policy on italicized thoughts in the publishing company's submission guidelines. As a new writer, even with an agent on your side, you stand a good chance of ending up in the slush pile on the first round. Once it has been pulled from the slush file (by any submissions editor on their staff) your submission stands to be accepted or rejected outright. And it may well be decided by whether your manuscript annoys the submissions editor, either the original one or the one mining the slush pile. KaTrian, publishers are also looking for an author and a manuscript they can work with. If they see a large number of errors, the manuscript ay n eed too much work to get it into publishable state. They are also looking for a writer who gives an impression of professionalism, not someone who will stand their ground and argue about every requested change. Knowing and following professional standards for manuscripts is part of that impression. Whether or not a given editor objects to italicized thoughts will vary. But no editor will object to well-formed literal thought formatted according to standard practice. And the go/no-go decision will largely depend on the quantity of red ink on the first few pages, and only partially on how many are "severe" errors.
@Cogito Okey, but on what logic do you base the assumption that the said editor won't be annoyed by the LACK of italics??
@Cogito make up your mind: editor's personal preferences vs standardized guidelines ...the only completely utterly absolutely generaly accepted and massively utilized rule for using italics in an english text that you can find in a vast majority of public guidelines covers foreign words: Thou shalt useth italicized text for words of another language, or something like that. There is no general consensus among academics or/nor publishers on the subject of unspoken dialogue - thus leaving the writer (and/or his agent) with only one certain option: to actually LOOK into guidelines given by specific publisher AND any available books recently published by the said publisher to personally conclude which option might be prefered by the same publisher.
I haven't read through this thread. All I want to know is, how does a thread that only asks whether italics should be used for thoughts gather over three hundred and twenty responses? WTF? You'd think everyone would have had their say and the issue would have been settled by now!
First, I had received conflicting advice on this technique so I set out to investigate the evidence. I posted what I found. Then that evidence was dismissed so I collected more, and then some. I posted that. And when that was ignored with more assertions of absolute truth (because one major style guide doesn't list internal dialogue as a use for italics), and, opinion masquerading as fact (that using italics was a sign of an inferior writer), I thought it unfair to any new readers in the thread who might think the unsupported assertions were fact. And along the way a straw man needed correcting several times (that the caveat of always checking with a publisher before submitting a manuscript had been missed when it hadn't). Voilà, you have the conditions for a 300+ reply thread.
Oh yes, definitely, but I was asking this in regard to italicized thoughts. I can see an editor/publisher considering italicized thoughts amateurish because the standard guidelines don't change just like that, no matter how many writers went against the grain, especially if pushing to e.g. general fiction market that seemingly employs italics less than SF/F. Yet considering there're such rules to submissions as "please underline italics in your manuscript" (another nonsensical standard: underline?), the usage seems not to be akin to a pistol trained to a foot and pulling the trigger. Anyway, as an agent or publisher, I'd still go for the manuscript that's most likely to sell and doesn't require an editor to rewrite it -- and is written by an author who's willing to sell the hell out of it.
It's because manuscript format began with typewritten copy, and remains typewriter-friendly. Most typewriters cannot render italics, so the standard is underlinging text to be rendered as italics. There is a sense to it all, even if you aren't aware of it.
I put my characters thoughts in italics. I think it makes it easier to distinguish between thoughts, feelings and dialogue. I've seen it done many different ways thought, Harry Potter doesn't think in italics.
