Texting consensus

I've been looking around and there doesn't seem to be a consensus for how to write out text messages. I saw in one book I saw the writer use bold text, but that should really not be the way we want to go. It draws your eye right to it on the page, it's just distracting.

Somewhere inside google I'm being told italics is the way to go. Which makes some sense, as thoughts are also 'unspoken' dialogue and also in italics. But I've got a brief text exchange between two characters and formatting that like I would actual dialogue looks messy.

I'm sorry I caused a fight.
What do you mean?
You canceled your date with Shaun, didn't you?
No, I didn't.

As dialogue you could pull that off, with the quotations helping. This just looks like bad Nick Cave lyrics.

And if there is some sort of consensus, would that hold up for tweets as well?

 

You could do it like old school days and set it up like an IM conversation.

Chad: I'm sorry I caused a fight
Me: What do you mean?
Chad: You canceled your date with Shaun, didn't you?
Me: No, I didn't.

I'd see nothing wrong with that as long as you don't make an entire scene based that way. I've also done italics for a text message.

"The phone buzzed on the desk. She reached over and swiped it, knocking off the old Chinese food containers.
You're in deep shit. She laughed and put the phone back on the desk. She wasn't in deep shit, yet."

I've also had the text be in italics and then the person receiving the text say their response out loud as they type it back.

"The phone buzzed on the desk. She reached over and swiped it blah blah blah.
You're in deep shit. She laughed and tapped back a response. "Not yet, I think." She put the phone back on the desk."

Obviously I'd format it differently if I were putting it into a word processor, but that's the gist.

 

I write it as dialogue.

"I'm sorry I caused a fight." He messaged.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You canceled your date with Shaun, didn't you?"
"No, I didn't."

 

I've seen italics most often, and I have no problems with it.

 

Either italics or just writing it as dialogue works I think. I agree bold is too much.

 

So, pick my poison then.
It's something I'll try to avoid as much as possible anyway, I'll just see what looks best.