Punctuating an IM chat

Katrina S. Forest · Jun 7, 2011

I've got two characters having a conversation via instant messaging. How do I punctuate this in standard manuscript format? Just like regular spoken dialogue? Italicized? Just like regular spoken dialogue, plus italics? I'm not showing the usernames of the characters, and there's actions happening in between each line, so I'm not sure it should be a separate block of text each time a new line is typed.

Guardian · Jun 7, 2011

If there are actions in between, I vote for italics. I'm not sure if there is a standard for how to deal with this yet. It may come down to what your editor wants.

Maryn · Jun 7, 2011

I'd treat it like quoted text, not italicized but with an extra blank line above and below it, indented from both the right and the left margins. If a lot of the lines are so short they don't line wrap, and to your eye it's not obvious which lines are the IM, then italics will make it clear.

Like Guardian said, I don't think there's a standard yet. It just needs to be apparent.

Maryn, who wouldn't worry about it a lot

absitinvidia · Jun 7, 2011

Italics for now, plus a note for the editor. This is the kind of thing that the publisher will decide and the copy editor will mark.

Terie · Jun 8, 2011

Maryn said:
I'd treat it like quoted text, not italicized but with an extra blank line above and below it, indented from both the right and the left margins.

I vote for this. Or it's how I do it, anyway.

Katrina S. Forest · Jun 8, 2011

Thanks for the advice. I might stick with just italics, then. Only one of the typed lines is longer than a single sentence, so it would probably look more like I randomly decided to put a bunch of extra blank lines in the manuscript if I treated it like quoted text.

AudreyInDC · Jun 22, 2011

Katrina S. Forest said:
I've got two characters having a conversation via instant messaging. How do I punctuate this in standard manuscript format? Just like regular spoken dialogue? Italicized? Just like regular spoken dialogue, plus italics? I'm not showing the usernames of the characters, and there's actions happening in between each line, so I'm not sure it should be a separate block of text each time a new line is typed.

I'd go with italicizing it and standardizing some of the spelling and punctuation if you can without losing the flavor of it as an IM chat.

Punctuating an IM chat

Katrina S. Forest

Guardian

just the worst honestly

Maryn

At Sea

absitinvidia

A bit of a wallflower

Terie

Writer is as Writer does

Katrina S. Forest

AudreyInDC

New Fish; Learning About Thick Skin