I have stopped using italics. However, I do use thought tags if I put the thougths in first person, which I only do if I cannot word them any other way. If I do thoughts in third person, I don't use tags. He needed to get out of town. First thing, new clothes, common clothes that would not stand out in a crowd. He entered the store. I need to get out of town, he thought. First thing, new clothes, cmmon clothes that will not stand out in a crowd. He entered the store.
To me, italics should be used very sparingly. For one thing, they are hard on the eye. But there are two other ways italics are commonly used. Italics often indicate EMPHASIS--you can't use capital letters for emphasising more than a word or two; certainly a whole sentence in capital letters doesn't normally work. Italics also indicate FOREIGN WORDS sometimes. I'd say it's better NOT to use italics for internal dialogue, unless it just pops up occasionally from time to time.
I used to use italics for thought and have since stopped, because someone whose opinion matters more than mine for whatever reason decided that it's improper... I hate it. I don't know how to explain it, but it feels less like I'm actually delving into my characters' minds. It feels like their thoughts are little more important than my description of that smelly hot dog stand they just passed. Plus, it can be a little confusing with plain type thoughts, especially if the tag is at the end of a long thought. I'm not the only one who thinks this, either. I thought we were supposed to do whatever we could to avoid reader confusion. But some old guy decided he doesn't like italics, so others' opinions be damned.
Te difference there is that the third person thoughts are not literal thought/internal dialogue. They are narration of what the character is thinking. The first person form is literal internal dialogue. For that reason, it can often stand alone without a tag, especially if the surriounding context makes it clear: Granted that this example would be even clearer with , she thought appended to the end of the first sentence in the second paragraph. But in a longer passage, you might not want to tag every single thought, just as you wouldn't tag every fragment of external dialogue.
COG, I agree. When I do use thought tags, I use it like a speach tag. I put one tag after the end of the first sentence. I need to get out of here, he thought. Gun fire, that's bad. Police will be here soon. Why did he have to run? I told him to not move. Dammit, I told him. He grabbed his bag and exited the bank.
I used to italicize thoughts, before I started reading... Dostoevsky I think it was, and he has this writing style all his own that combines internal monologue with third person view. It's like the word moves along with the character's thoughts. So now I don't italicize or use quotes--nothing. Just write it there and if it's written right then people will be able to tell it's thought. Pretty much... yep.
That's the thing to strive for. It can be hard to do; but it's impossible to do if you use italics as a crutch.
I was reading a website talking about, and the general idea was this: Using a mix of italics, integrated narrative, and the 'he thought' tag is good. But, he wrote, use your own judgment to decide what to use and when. I have to say, I like the idea of mixing it up to avoid the redundant use of anything.
I'm sticking with the Chicago Manual of Style. After all the writing intensive classes I took in college, my professional writings in business and media stick to the AP style book... However, that's what the Style manuals are for..to tell us how it should be done.
I don't mean to revive a dead thread, but I had a question about thoughts and didn't want to create an entirely new thread just for this. I used to write thoughts in italics, but after doing quite a bit of internet research, I found out that many publishers frown upon italicized thoughts. So, I changed them. My problem is that I am writing in third person, and I have two main characters, a male and female. While I've been careful to label "he thought" or "she thought" upon their first thought of the scene, this gets redundant. The following thoughts after the initial tagged ones are just left alone. The result is something like this (not my actual story): Jack went to the table where Jill was sitting. Why is she so upset? he thought. She sniffled and wiped her eyes. "You don't understand." I don't understand what? He tried to her hand, but she pushed him away. "What are you talking about, Jill?" "I thought we were best friends!" Well, we're friends, but are we really best friends? I apologize for the long, stupid example, but I wanted to give a bigger context. In the scene above, is it too confusing to readers that the first-person thoughts are Jack's? This is pretty much the style I've written in. I just don't want to be rejected by publishers for having conflicting POVs, when really, I'm just trying to avoid italicizing my thoughts. -Kid
It reads fine, but I don't think you should 'jump heads' too often in the same chapter. That's confusing.
It's like a rifftrax where you get a comment about everything the girl says from an omnipresent narrator - not exactly the best kind of dialogue. Just let the dialogue roll and do some exposition and thoughts in between it and the next action scene. It is not too confusing, but I don't find it very compelling either. Me, I only use italics these days for diary entries and letters and other such things.
Ah, but if we can't use italics to indicate thoughts, and we can't have a question mark before the "he thought," then how are we supposed to show when a character is thinking of a question? Without complicating things just to satisfy this baffling anti-italics rule, that is. Perhaps something like "He thought, *insert question here*"? IMO, having the tag before the thought is kind of awkward. I like that even less than no italics.
If you need a tag, put it before a literal thought question. Note that using italics wouldn't change the grammatical rule anyway.
So many arbitrary hoops to jump through. It's really starting to seem like math: complicated and unreasonable just because it can be, and with little to no reward. If this is the word of the English gods, so be it. I still think these gods should be shot. In the face. With a cannon. And then burned. Sentence fragments to anger them. Just because I can.
Do you mean: He thought, What's going on here? If so, would the word after the tag be capitalized? (as opposed to: He thought, what's going on here?)
The Chicago Manual of Style (15th Edition) doesn't directly address this, and that's the most comprehensive source I have found on unspoken dialogue. According to CMS, the two alternatives for unspokendialogue are to quote it like normal speech or to omit the quotes, "according to the context or te writer's preference" [11.47]. the two examples given are: Based on this, I'd use the quoted form if the unquoted form leads to awkward syntax. and the unquoted form to indicate unspoken dialogue without having to tag it. That way, literal thought stands out without nonstandard constructs like italics. Awkward syntax will only result if you are using a tag, and only in certain circumstances. You may therefore end up with a mixture in your writing, but the main consideration is to be clear without being obtrusive. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with your example: But a publisher might possibly prefer that it be quoted. There are gray areas in SPaG, and this is certainly one of them. The "rules" are really compiled from common professional usage, not created ab initio, so there will be inconsistencies here and there.
