question about italicizing

If there's a tag, there's no formatting:

I need some chocolate, she thought.

If there's no tag, you underline the text you want to italicise.:

Nichola went to her kitchen cupboard and couldn't find anything to eat. I need some chocolate.

But then I've never written a conversation that's held purely through thought, so...I'd probably treat it the same as I would normal thoughts. Or maybe put a hyphen at the start of each line of thought/speech, to show the difference between that and 'normal' thoughts and dialogue.

LimeyDawg said:

Does anybody know of a rule about italicizing dialogue that happens in thought, rather than spoken out loud? If two of my characters are communicating via thought, is it okay to italicize? Do I need quotation marks?
Also, would something like the following be correct.

You shouldn't have done that, he thought.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mark

Click to expand...

Communicating through thoughts, some call it mind-speak, and I'm sure there are other ways writers refer to it.

I've used the fist one below and have seen the other two done. There are probably other ways as well. Generally the author picks something to set it off from regular dialogue so the reader knows it isn't spoken out loud. You have to make sure the reader knows the characters are communicating through their thoughts/minds so whichever way you decide just stick to that.

::You shouldn't have done that.::

-You shouldn't have done that.-

*You shouldn't have done that.*

Variation between an action tag and he said/she said or insert name works well.

LimeyDawg said:

Does anybody know of a rule about italicizing dialogue that happens in thought, rather than spoken out loud? If two of my characters are communicating via thought, is it okay to italicize? Do I need quotation marks?
Also, would something like the following be correct.

You shouldn't have done that, he thought.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mark

Click to expand...

An issue to consider is that italics are somewhat harder to read than normal type, and it's generally wise to avoid extensive use. If you are going to have any significant amount of telepathic conversation, I think it would be better to treat it like normal dialog, but with a different symbol in place of the quotation marks, as in Mel's examples. (I've always liked the double colon, but there's no standard.) The first time it's used, you'll need to make it clear that you are indicating mental speech rather than oral speech, but after that you're good to go.

Also, the "he thought" tag feels wrong to me for dialog. I would be inclined to reserve that tag for purely internal thoughts. I think the neutral "he said" would be preferable.

I remember that kind of formatting from books I read as a kid -- middle-grade novels and teen series books. Something along the lines of:

So it's true! Elizabeth thought. My father really is a monster!

And then, if the same character was having thoughts again within the same scene, the next ones might not even be set off with a dialogue tag.

Could this explain why all of my cats have gone missing?

I mostly read contemporary YA and literary / mainstream adult novels now, and I can't remember the last time I saw the "he / she thought" tag coupled with italics. If this "thought dialogue" can't be woven into the text otherwise, I think the italics would be OK. It's definitely been done before.

I wouldn't worry too much about this. I'd use italics for actual thought and some identifying quote-replacement for mind-speech. If the story is good, no publisher will reject it because of the formatting. If they like it, they'll tell you how they want it formatted.