Another Punctuation Question

evangaline

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I always seem to find myself in a punctuation quagmire! The MC is thinking the following:

There was a fine line between a Fuck you, you think you’re so funny pissed off Sharon and a Fuck you, I’m out of here pissed off Sharon. He could deal with the first. He couldn't live with the second.

Are the italics okay and should there be any punctuation after each statement? Thanks guys!
 

JetFueledCar

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There's a lot of ways to indicate the phrasing you're using. Italics is one. Sectioning it off in quotations is another. Hyphenating the whole phrase is another. I've seen all of them at one time or another and none of them particularly bother me (though the hyphenated version sounds weird in my head when I read it). In the cases where I've read or written a phrase like this in italics, it's been done exactly the way you did it here. Someone who's been through copyediting will be able to tell you if it's technically right and if it's something that your publisher might have a house style for, but IMO it's totally understandable and reads naturally the way you've done it.
 

evangaline

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Thank you for your input! I really appreciate it.
 

BethS

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I always seem to find myself in a punctuation quagmire! The MC is thinking the following:

There was a fine line between a Fuck you, you think you’re so funny pissed off Sharon and a Fuck you, I’m out of here pissed off Sharon. He could deal with the first. He couldn't live with the second.

Are the italics okay and should there be any punctuation after each statement? Thanks guys!

Pissed off needs to be hyphenated because it's being used as an adjective to modify Sharon. As it was, I had to reread the first statement a couple times before I could make sense of it.

Personally, I would use quote marks instead of italics, but it's really author's choice.
 

evangaline

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Thanks for the hyphen info! I realized it after I posted. I always second-guess myself about quotes vs italics.
 

avekevin

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My first impression was that the italics seemed most sensible, but I found myself tripped up by the use of capitals in the middle of the sentence. I thought there some sort of typo somewhere, and I had to re-read it several times to get through it.

I think I would use quotes to differentiate the content of the statements from the rest of the sentence.
 

evangaline

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Tx for your input! I was worried about using quotation marks because the two statements weren't actually spoken. *g* Have to rethink that, I guess!
 

dot-dot-dash

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Personally, I like the flow of italics. Quotes always break up a sentence for me, and unless someone is actually speaking, I tend to avoid them.

I'd be inclined to drop the capitals, though. The whole italicised phrase is descriptive, not a quote, and I think you'd get away with leaving them out. I had the same trip-up as avekevin.

Your editor may disagree :)
 

Daggilarr

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I always seem to find myself in a punctuation quagmire! The MC is thinking the following:

[FONT=&]There was a fine line between a Fuck you, you think you’re so funny pissed off Sharon and a Fuck you, I’m out of here pissed off Sharon. He could deal with the first. He couldn't live with the second.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Are the italics okay and should there be any punctuation after each statement? Thanks guys! [/FONT]

Not italics, nor quotes if it's not actually spoken. How about em-dashes to separate them?