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Depicting Texting in Fiction

MiloMinderbinder

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Would like to get some opinions on how best to depict texting.

In my WIP I have two present day college students texting:


Angela: meet 4 lunch l8r?

Sammy: sure cant w8t 2 see u

It was suggested in my WG that I was stuck in 2005 (true to some extent) and that with autocorrect the passage should really read as:

Angela: Meet for lunch later?

Sammy: Sure can't wait to see you

I was also advised that younger folks avoid ending texts with a period. It's shouting, or cold, or something that old people do.

Additionally, I was going back on forth as to how to tag the texts. We're in Sammy's 3rd person POV. So should it be:


Angela: Meet for lunch later?

Sammy: Sure can't wait to see you

OR


Angela: Meet for lunch later?

Me: Sure can't wait to see you


Any thoughts/comments are welcome.
 

Fiender

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Yeah, the "w8t" and l8r" in the first example kinda burned by eyes, not gonna lie.

As for the periods, I (late 20's here) only end sentences in periods (in my texts) when I send a multiple sentence message. It does seem kinda 'final' or blunt to bother putting a period at the end of a sentence when it's short and all by itself.

And as for the name-tagging, I would say "me" is good for first person, but use the POV's character's name if you are writing in third person.
 

InkFinger

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Literally had this whole conversation with my son last night. I suggest, narrow margins, left justified for the sender and right justified for the receiver. In other words, mimic text in your phone.

Angela: Meet for lunch later?

Me: Sure can't wait to see you​

And used acronyms, emojis, and what not help to apply style to the conversation. My son points out that I use full sentences and punctuation in my texts, which screams old man. He uses no punctuation, but full sentences. He has a friend that writes in all lower case truncated sentences. And as noted, the acronyms are peppered but not overdone. A text in full text-ese reads 2005. But simple replies of idk or omfg are common.

Just a suggestion, use or not to your liking.
 

pharm

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Yeah, I agree with those suggestions you received. At this point misspellings/abbreviations/word-morphs are a lot rarer than they used to be before touch screen interfaces and autocorrect. Now it's a very deliberate retro choice to include something like "l8r" when it's faster to type "later." Though you'll still see certain morphs for particular emphasis, like "wut" (maybe even with a period) to emphasize stunned disbelief or total confusion. You'll also still see plenty of now-classic abbreviations like "omg" and "wtf," of course. Similarly it's also pure affectation now to write wholly in lowercase when phones automatically start sentences with capitals and correct proper nouns to uppercase.

I might suggest drafting these on a phone to get some authentic autocorrect errors in there. That's probably the defining distinctive feature of text conversations now — the weird hiccups and substitutions autocorrect inserts for you, often when you're deliberately trying to include a proper noun not in the phone's dictionary.

Agree with Fiender that in this example you'd use the POV character's name if writing in third person.

And yup, it's very true that folks in their mid thirties or younger generally don't end texts with a period unless they're trying to signal finality, extreme seriousness, or anger. The default punctuation for short messages is none; it's unneeded since the end of a message tends to indicate the end of a complete thought in a very literal sense.

If you want to see a lot of actual millennial/gen z text conversations, tiktok is a pretty good place to find (usually humorous) samples.
 
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pharm

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Literally had this whole conversation with my son last night. I suggest, narrow margins, left justified for the sender and right justified for the receiver. In other words, mimic text in your phone.

Angela: Meet for lunch later?

Me: Sure can't wait to see you​

And used acronyms, emojis, and what not help to apply style to the conversation. My son points out that I use full sentences and punctuation in my texts, which screams old man. He uses no punctuation, but full sentences. He has a friend that writes in all lower case truncated sentences. And as noted, the acronyms are peppered but not overdone. A text in full text-ese reads 2005. But simple replies of idk or omfg are common.

Just a suggestion, use or not to your liking.

Oh this is a great formatting suggestion! Looks a lot more like an actual text convo that way.

And yup, liberal use of emojis, can't believe I forgot to mention that one. Not everyone does it but it's pretty common to use emojis for emphasis or anywhere a statement might otherwise have emotional ambiguity. And some people use emojis so heavily they outnumber the text phrases.
 

MythMonger

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I'm trying "texting tags" as opposed to dialog tags. Single quotes instead of double quotes.

'Hey,' I texted. 'Where are you?'
'Look behind you,' she texted back.
I turned around. "You scared the heck out of me. Where'd you come from?"
etc.

A lot of this will depend on how much texting is done in your WIP, and if the single quotes are used for anything else.

Too much of anything outside of the norm can be annoying.
 

indianroads

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I've not had to write a character texting, but for internet messages I indented and changed the font to courier.
 

neandermagnon

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Yeah, I agree with those suggestions you received. At this point misspellings/abbreviations/word-morphs are a lot rarer than they used to be before touch screen interfaces and autocorrect. Now it's a very deliberate retro choice to include something like "l8r" when it's faster to type "later." Though you'll still see certain morphs for particular emphasis, like "wut" (maybe even with a period) to emphasize stunned disbelief or total confusion. You'll also still see plenty of now-classic abbreviations like "omg" and "wtf," of course. Similarly it's also pure affectation now to write wholly in lowercase when phones automatically start sentences with capitals and correct proper nouns to uppercase.

I agree, stuff like l8r and other txt spk (text speak) is very early/mid 00's. Ever since smartphones came out and phone companies stopped putting character limits in texts, having unlimited text messages as part of phone contract packages - not to mention wifi based text chat like watts app, it's become much easier to write full words and there's no longer a financial incentive to limit characters in texts.

I might suggest drafting these on a phone to get some authentic autocorrect errors in there. That's probably the defining distinctive feature of text conversations now — the weird hiccups and substitutions autocorrect inserts for you, often when you're deliberately trying to include a proper noun not in the phone's dictionary.

Or if you're like me, you turn autocorrect off and make stupid typing errors because you can't touch type on phones like iff for off. The little screen keyboard is very small and it's very easy to hit the wrong letter. Then you follow it with a message where you correct the errors by typing * then the correct spelling. For example:

Make sure you don't forget to feed the vat.

*cat
 
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The Second Moon

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I feel like the way the character texts depends on who they are.

For example my adult inventor character texts in complete sentences with correct grammar while his 11-year-old assistant uses stuff like U for "You" or R for "Are".
 

sayamini

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I usually just use regular dialogue-esque tags for texting, but for emails I indent the whole paragraph and include the "Dear X" and "Love, X." Here's an example of how I handle texting:

The phone dings again. I let out a cool breath and swipe it back up. “When are you coming back?” he says. Great. A question. If I don’t reply, it’ll seem suspicious.

“When school starts,” I write.

Ding.

“What day are you driving in?”

What is his problem? I pull up my calendar. School starts on the sixteenth.

“The 15[SUP]th[/SUP],” I write back.

“See you on the 15[SUP]th[/SUP], then. How is home?”

So it looks like dialogue, but the tags say "write" instead of "say."

Also, if you're including the actual transcription of the text, no, young people don't use periods at the end of the message. But they do use periods at the end of sentences in the middle of the message, if that makes sense? My 19 y/o sister tends to use all lowercase and has her autocorrect turned off "for aesthetic purposes" as well, and there are a lot of abbreviations, but never with numbers. She spells out "to" and "for." She does not capitalize her acronyms, so "omg" and "lol" are lowercased as well.
 
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MythMonger

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I usually just use regular dialogue-esque tags for texting, but for emails I indent the whole paragraph and include the "Dear X" and "Love, X." Here's an example of how I handle texting:



So it looks like dialogue, but the tags say "write" instead of "say."

Also, if you're including the actual transcription of the text, no, young people don't use periods at the end of the message. But they do use periods at the end of sentences in the middle of the message, if that makes sense? My 19 y/o sister tends to use all lowercase and has her autocorrect turned off "for aesthetic purposes" as well, and there are a lot of abbreviations, but never with numbers. She spells out "to" and "for." She does not capitalize her acronyms, so "omg" and "lol" are lowercased as well.

I like that, too. It fits into the prose more seamlessly. For example, that narrative thought you included (What is his problem?...) wouldn't have flowed as well otherwise.