I personally think it depends on what kind of narrative style a writer is working in. There's no standard answer to this question. By convention, symbols do something in the reader's mind regarding the text - and ever since indirect free style and stream of consciousness techniques were developed there have also developed options. Flow thoughts seamlessly and unmarked in the general narrative or set it aside in some way, through signal phrases, indents, quotations, italics, or some combination of the above or others. I think as long as it is suiting the purposes of the writer and narration, pretty much anything goes.
Still a little confused. I already knew what Instant Messaging was (even though it didn't click when I saw the IM - chiefly because I don't see any link with fiction writing). I also now know what 'plain text' is, thanks to a link in that wiki article, but Plain Text is a computer term. What do either of these terms have to do with anything that's being discussed here?
I suspect you are being too literal. I think it was more of a joke. We'll have to wait for @crystalwizard to clarify for us. For all I know my tangent was completely off base.
Could be that @crystalwizard has one of those accents in which he/she is in the habit of dropping h's. He (she?) really means HIM, and the all-caps mean he's talking about God. He talks to God in plain text.
I do use italics for thoughts and internal monologue. It seems, however, to be a contentious issue. I would be happy to do this another way or continue. Have at it.
I've had this dilemma in the past. An important thing to take into consideration is the POV. If it's in 1st person, italics are unnecessary because the whole story is the MC's thoughts. Personally, I don't use italics in any 3rd person POV stories, either.
I was tempted, in a fit of evil, to start another thread where I innocently ask: "I say, chaps, what's the consensus on using italics for thoughts?" But I like my account to remain unbanned
I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever understand why this topic has the capacity to twist knickers the way it does. It is the must utterly ridiculous thing. That people should have such inflamed passions about italics as to clutch pearls, and throw gauntlets at the mention of opposing thoughts is to know that we humans have reached the pinnacle point on this planet through shear randomness or as the latest episode on that cosmic TV show "The Real Primates of Earth" (think The Real Housewives of Whereeverthefuck)
On some distant world, an alien teen is watching Earth by means of advanced technology allowing instantaneous transmission of sights and sounds, and every so often his parent walks in and says "Why are you watching this crap?" Meanwhile, among literary primates on the third rock out from our sun, someone mentions the Oxford comma:
By page 100 of this converged thread, the combined mass and gravity will begin to compress into degenerated neutron matter. We'll have to come up with some sort of Dyson Sphere to contain it in case it becomes a magnetar. Heaven help us all....
As an aside, did you see the reports last year about the so-called "alien superstructure" that some where saying might be a partially-constructed Dyson sphere. What ever happened with that? They way it fell out of the news cycle I assume more mundane explanations were forthcoming.
I saw it. No idea where that story ended up. Perhaps we were just viewing the efforts of an alien civilization to overcome the Italics Phase of their cultural progression. I hope they made it.
