Bold and/or all CAPITALS - how to format?

[jl1966ca]

What is the proper way to format a manuscript to show that you want the text bolded or all CAPITALIZED or BOTH? This might be used to reflect words on a shirt, sign, flyer that the MC is reading, etc. (Stephen King does this quite a lot).

Your help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[ChristineR]

If it's capitalized as on a sign, just capitalize it. If it's words that need to be marked as special, then the standard is to underline it in manuscript. This makes it easy for the typesetters to spot. When it's printed, the typesetters will follow the house standard and style sheet for your book, and italicize or bold it appropriately.

If for some reason you don't think that this conveys the sense properly (for example, someone is reading a crazy sign that switches from bold to italics to bold italics and back to all-caps), you can just bold it. The world won't end if you do it that way.

[alleycat]

Just show it in the manuscript as you want it to appear when published.

Italics uses a different format; an underline is used to indicate italics. The reason an underline is used rather than italics itself is because short italics words are really easy to miss for the typesetter or anyone else reading the manuscript.

[benbradley]

Just show it in the manuscript as you want it to appear when published.

Italics uses a different format; an underline is used to indicate italics. The reason an underline is used rather than italics itself is because short italics words are really easy to miss for the typesetter or anyone else reading the manuscript.
Also, there's the minor problem that typewriters (probably used to write more published novels than computers) don't do italics, other than the fancy expensive "golf ball" models or later-model daisy-wheel typewriters, and even then you had to change the type element to an extra optional element to go between Roman and Italics. Any typewriter can be backspaced and underline characters struck "over" other characters.

One of my earliest typing experiences was on an ASR-33 (actually, several of them) teletype which could receive (and perhaps send, I forget) lower-case as well as upper case characters, but everything was printed on the page as upper case. THAT WAS A LIMITA ... er, THAT was a limitation.

[Danthia]

These days, just make them all caps and bold. The format clues were there when we still used typewriters and couldn't make things bold or italics.

I asked my editor once if she preferred italics or underlines, and she said why on Earth would anyone underline? So there you go. :)

[Duncan J Macdonald]

Given what word processors can do today, there is nothing wrong with using standard proofreader's markings to indicate what you want.

See this site (http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm)

Your editor will recognize them, as will your copy-editor and your typesetter.

Italics == single underscore
Small Capitals == double underscore
All Capitals == triple underscore (generally used to correct errors)
boldface == wavy underline

[maestrowork]

Bold and CAPITALIZE.

The double or triple underlines are silly and only the hardest core editors would know that. They're relics.

I still underline for italics, simply because it's hard to show italics with courier font. If I'm submitting in TNR, I use italics. But bold and capitalize work just fine, why not use them?

(however, always check with submission guidelines first)

[James D. Macdonald]

Italic is a single underline
Boldface is a wavy underline
Small Caps is a double underline
Italic boldface is a wavy underline over a straight underline.

For the tee-shirt words, I'd use small caps rather than capitals. And for any (ital, sm. caps, bold) that I expected to see in the finished version without having to re-add them in galleys, I'd use standard marks rather than fooling around with making the wordprocessor create the actual characters.

(And if you are adding them in the galleys, you'll be doing it with a pencil and using those same underline marks to do so.)

[Terie]

I asked my editor once if she preferred italics or underlines, and she said why on Earth would anyone underline? So there you go. :)

Answer: Because when you have your manuscript printed out next to the printed galleys, it's one heck of a lot easier to see the underlines in the MS to check against the galley than it is to spot italics. Ask me how I know. ;)