I like writing with italics but I hate reading them. I have had several people say they like italics for inner thoughts and others say they wish italics were eliminated from the English language.
Is there a industry standard for italics? If not which techniques seem to be the most effective to seperate POV from narration without using tags?
JB Skaggs
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
You should be able to separate internal monologue from narration by context and perhaps by sentence structure. You don't need italics to set thoughts apart because by default everything is described in the voice of the POV character when you write in third person limited and in first person.
Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :
I especially hate and despise prologues that run pages and are all in italics. To me it's a sign that says -- skip this!
That goes for any italics that runs more than half a page (and even half a page is pushing my limits).
Internal thoughts can be shown through the wording of the text much better -- my opinion, of course -- but I prefer them that way. I save italics for foreign words and for words that are emphasized when the character spoke them.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
OSC's advice: never long stretches of italics. Too hard to read. If you must have a stretch of different font, do it so:
For internal thoughts, Joe thought, it's no problem: you just put them in normal font. It looked just like dialog, except without the quotation marks.
Posted by dee_boncci (Member # 2733) on :
What I've heard is that you can use italics for remembered dialogue (a character remembers something from a past conversation), and can be used sparingly for word emphasis. My understanding is that it is best to use normal font for internal monologue. I think it's common to use italics for foreign words/phrases, too.
I agree that too much is bothersome from a reader's perspective.
All that being said, I see published works that vary from almost no italics, to gushing italics at every turn.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I'd say, use it sparingly. Extra emphasis inside dialog...a stretch of something that needs to be set apart for some reason or other...book titles and such when mentioned.
That doesn't mean to write in italics if you're preparing a print manuscript. Indicate italics by underlining. It's hard to tell italics from regular at a glance, especially when typesetting. (I've thrown out a lot of their rules of late, but I'm still sticking with that one, at least for now.)
(Of course I'm addicted to italics here. This is like conversation, and ya gotta let me have something to emphasize parts of sentences. I could capitalize, but online people tell me that's rude behavior.)