Italics for thoughts?

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

  1. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    There is no consensus on this topic. There are genres where italics are often used, and genres where they rarely are. Also, a manuscript is not necessarily formatted in the same way as a published book. I'd recommend doing a fairly broad survey of the genre that you want to write in, then, when you're ready to submit, try to determine the preferences of your target agents.
     
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  2. Haze-world

    Haze-world Active Member

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    Many thanks ChickenFreak, I will follow your advice.
    : )
     
  3. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Or you could just not, because @ChickenFreak has failed (despite many requests) to point to any examples where an agent put their preference for italics where anyone could find it, much less an example of someone getting turned away due to said preference.
     
  4. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Jack, you seem to be asserting that italics for internal monologue are mandatory. They are not. I'm not trying to take away anyone's flexibility in making a choice of style. You seem to be doing so.

    Perhaps you could accept that an author can make that decision on their own, and that they need not comply with your personal preference?
     
  5. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    A snippet on this--there's a quote in "shop talk" on the Chicago Manual of Style website where an editor (copy editor? bigger editor? not sure) says

    "I'm constantly removing italics used for stress, for internal dialogue, and even for entire block quotations."

    Irritatingly, the website doesn't seem to support easy reference by link, but you can find the page by Googling

    chicago manual of style "help me understand my copy editor" part two

    Many sources cite the most recent Chicago Manual of Style as saying “Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference.” This is apparently a change that eliminates the mention of italics for this purpose. I'd like to get my hands on both the older and newer version of the manual to get it myself direct from the source, but that's not likely to happen in the very near future. Does anyone have a copy that they can refer to?

    So, oddly, as italics-for-thought seem to be more frequently used, one of the main style manuals seems to have eliminated any blessing for it.

    Edited to add: It appears that italics were blessed as one of several options in the 14th edition, and dropped from the 15th. I'm curious to know exactly what the 16th says.

    Edited again: It's often asserted (for example, in one of the comments in the page that Ginger linked to) that without italics you'd "have to" use quote marks, thought tags, etc. You don't. This page has several examples of the usual, classic method of communicating thoughts without such cluttering conventions:

    http://cleverbirdy.blogspot.com/2010/09/this-week-i-was-involved-in-interesting.html
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2015
  6. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I think it won't die because the subject is so unresolved. There is no definitive answer that everybody in the industry agrees upon. And for some reason, it's a very emotive issue, and people (including me) have strong opinions on the subject. So it's argy-bargy all the time. I always read the new offerings, just out of interest.
     
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  7. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    When people claim you are a poor writer if you italicize thoughts, it's quite insulting. And when people tell new forum members one should not use them, without acknowledging the volume of evidence to the contrary in this very thread, that's dishonest.

    None of the 'it's OK to use italics' crowd suggests people who don't use them should. On one side, either is acceptable. On the other side only not using italics is acceptable. And that's just wrong.

    I agree with @ChickenFreak when she says
    ... though I don't know which genres rarely use them.

    But as @Jack Asher noted, there have been several claims that editors might reject your work if he/she sees italicized thought, but that assertion has never, in this thread, been backed up with documented examples.


    The following without any context is not very meaningful. Like us, it's a guy in a forum who claims he's an editor. We don't know if the person quoted has any expertise:
    Any of the official CMoS forums are for subscribed members only so we likely couldn't see it without crossing the pay wall.

    I don't know which citation you are claiming this is from but none of the sources I recall posting said anything of the kind. The few that do say you should use quotes for thoughts just like speech are almost all chided as being wrong. Clearly you couldn't tell spoken words from thought if you do that.

    If you don't use italics you usually use tags.

    "Cluttering conventions"? :rolleyes:

    It's no more cluttering than tags.
     
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  8. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    I don't recall @Jack Asher or anyone else in this thread ever asserting italics were the only way to express internal monologue.

    Why do you think that? No one has ever said it's wrong not to use italics. The only convention I think is wrong is using quotes on unspoken dialogue. It makes no sense.
     
  9. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    You appear not to have read the post, where in I point out that you have been asked to show your work and repeatedly fail to do so. You also seem to have read a post in which I told @Haze-world that italics were mandatory, and that her choice was wrong.
    Unfortunately I cannot find those things, either the one I asked for in your post, or the implication you allude to in mine.
    Here it is again for you to look at. Please show your work this time.
     
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  10. Lewdog

    Lewdog Come ova here and give me kisses! Supporter Contributor

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    Does the common core method have to be used in showing work?
     
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  11. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Only if you want children to understand what you're doing.
     
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  12. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    *Raises glass* Here's to a thousand! And a thousand more! d-;
     
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  13. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Jack, as far as I can recall, you have yet to "show your work" and show me guidelines from agents that demand italics for thought. In fact, have you ever succeeded in "showing your work" and showing me a current edition of a style manual that demands, or even mentions, them?

    The fact that many books do not use italics for thought, and the fact that the Chicago Manual of Style has removed that option from their recommendations, suggests that other, non-italic strategies are not some sort of shocking innovation. When talking about books that don't use italics for internal thoughts, we're not talking about something like rainbow-colored text or placing the words right to left; we're talking about a style that is used in countless books, old and new.

    I could close my post with a similar patronizing commandment to you, but...nah.

    Edited to add: Well, no, I read a post--one that you conveniently requoted--in which you discouraged Haz-world from doing his/her own research about the issue.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2015
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  14. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    You might. Many, I'd say most, non-italics-using writers don't. And you absolutely don't need to. You choose italics; you can do that. But tags are absolutely not the only, or the best, alternative to italics.
     
  15. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    You said yourself you weren't sure of this. I've never heard it until now, only that is isn't in the CMoS.

    As for @Jack Asher not posting citations, are you ignoring the ones I've posted because he didn't post them himself?
     
  16. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    Here, you missed this word in my sentence: usually, not always, not mandatory, not you must use one or the other.

    I did say not to use quotes to correct your insinuating I had said to use them if not using italics.
     
  17. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    @ChickenFreak, despite this issue, I like you. I think you give great writing advice. Really, I believe that.

    I don't understand why you are reading italics users as telling you you should use them. I'm fine with your personal opinion you don't like seeing them. I don't understand why you want the rest of us to adopt your opinion.

    If it weren't controversial, I would understand it. I will say right now, don't use quotations for thoughts despite the fact a rare source says you should. I can say why: it makes the tag the only way you know a thought isn't spoken. It's not an aesthetic reason, it's a specific communication issue.

    But when it is simply a matter of taste and a matter that at least one of the more formal style guides does not list italics as a convention for inner monologue, then why try to get others to join you in what amounts to a personal preference?
     
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  18. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    What? At what point did I say that you said to use quotes?

    Ginger, a couple of posts ago you responded to my referring to quotes, tags, etc., as "cluttering conventions" by saying

    I agree that tags are not more cluttering than tags. Tags are pretty much exactly as cluttering as tags. Responding to my reference to tags as being "cluttering", by telling me that tags are "cluttering" is...well...not very responsive.

    So let's try this again.

    Internal thoughts/monologue/discourse do not require any of the following:

    - italics
    - quotes
    - thought tags

    Refusing to use italics doesn't mean that you have to use quotes or thought tags. Refusing to use italics or quotes does not mean that you have to use thought tags. Refusing to use italics or quotes or thought tags does not mean that you have to come up with some other punctuation or typographical convention. You do not have to use any of them.
     
  19. BrianIff

    BrianIff I'm so piano, a bad punctuator. Contributor

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    If you start the quote of thought with a tag, what's the communication issue?
     
  20. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    My issue in this particular waking moment of this thread is Jack's post, which I referred to a few minutes ago (probably after you started writing your post above) that seems to discourage a poster from doing any of his/her own research and decisionmaking on this issue.

    I also have an issue with what appears to be a belief that if you don't use italics you have to use either quotes or thought tags, when you don't.

    Both of those things seem, to me, to steer writers away from even being aware of the most common way that non-italicized thoughts are communicated.
     
  21. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    You claimed it was specifically in a citation I posted. I wanted it clear it was not something I recommended.

    I went back as far as page 35 in the thread. The only reference I made to "cluttering conventions" was in response to your use of the term in post #962. I was pointing out that you were using framing intended to disparage italicized thoughts.


    And you think any of us said otherwise?
     
  22. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    That was never my point. I pointed to the hundreds of books that do use them. Gaiman, Moore, King, MacCaffery, Pratchett, Adams, Eddings some of this must seem familiar to you.

    Your restraint is admirable, too bad you did it anyway with that sentence.


    Yes, because doing research on a subject that no agent considers, or requires in their submissions, is lunacy.
     
  23. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    While I very much dislike italics for thoughts, I also don't like quotes for them. Yes, in theory the thought tag would make things clear, but in practice people skip over tags, and they are likely to see the quote as spoken.

    Also, one of my issues with italicized thoughts is a suspension of disbelief issue: I don't belive that people think in clear, clean words all that often. I think that they think in fuzzier ways. The clear, clean words in both italicized and quoted thoughts are equally offensive to me when considered in that light.
     
  24. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I was referring to quotes and thought tags as "cluttering converntions". I said that tags were cluttering. You said that they're not as cluttering as tags.

    Jane: "Sugar is bad for you!"
    Fred: "It's not as bad for you as sugar!"
    Jane: "Huh?"

    Edited: To further clarify, I quote myself:

    The statement in red refers to the listed items in red.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2015
  25. GingerCoffee

    GingerCoffee Web Surfer Girl Contributor

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    There wouldn't be one, but then you are saying every time you use quotes you need a tag to designate spoken or unspoken. Seems like it would require excessive tags for the reader to keep it straight. If you limit quotes only to spoken dialogue you don't have that problem.
     

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