typed and verbal conversation

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I searched and couldn't find anything appropriate.

I have a conversation where the MC can hear the other person, but he must type his response.

Originally I thought that using italics for the typing, and regular double quotes for what he hears.

Seemed ok... but then I have sections where the MC has to send and receive messages (like email) - italics?

Now I'm stuck in a loop of overthinking... It needs to be consistent, but also clear as to how the message is being delivered. Maybe I should switch over to courier font for the typing?

Anyway - I'm too stuck in my head to make a decision, so I'm asking what others do?

Anna Iguana said:

What about using an action tag ("he typed" or "he wrote," etc.) and then including the typed replies just like dialogue? Like so...

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I tried that, but it didn't have the immediacy that I was looking for. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Curlz said:

You can also use a different font and bigger indent to set it apart.

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That could work for the email messages.
For conversation, maybe justify one side to the right and the other to the left?

Anna Iguana said:

Left-justified/right-justified might be really hard to follow reading an ebook on a phone screen.

(I say this as someone who reads poetry ebooks; line breaks, etc. can be a pain to decipher.)

Will be curious what you end up doing.

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Good point.

blackcat777 said:

>Follow the white rabbit, Neo.

Italics or Courier work! Simple is best.

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I'll have to try it different ways. Will probably go with courier indented for email. The conversations... I'll have to poke at it for awhile. Probably courier for typed, then just normal quotes for the audio.

blacbird said:

Yes, you are.



Assuming you are preparing a manuscript for eventual submission, I'd go with italics, AFTER clearly indicating that the responses are being typed, not spoken. Do not, however, mess with a font change.

Ultimately, if the piece is accepted, this becomes a matter for the publisher's editor to decide.

caw

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Actually, I plan to self publish.

What threw me was that the MC is typing, and he's only hearing the voice of who he's talking to. So the MC's part of the conversation will be in courier, but what's heard over the speaker will be in quotes. This seems a little ... different ... to me.

blacbird said:

Now that you have explained about self-publishing, I think this font idea would work fine, and I would do exactly what you suggest above: have the spoken material in quotes, and the typed material in Courier font, no quotes. I've seen something like this done, in a couple of older novels in which telegrams were used.

But another little wrinkle occurred to me last night. Everyone who types makes the occasional mistake. It might be useful to have a typo or two or three in the typed material. Just a thought.

caw

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I worry that incorporating (deliberate) errors in the typed messages might be jarring to the readers.

Anna Iguana said:

I think typos would probably jar me. I enjoy the logic of the suggestion, but I wonder whether omitting typos, though they occur in real life, is akin to omitting "ums" and "uhs" from fictional dialogue.

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Maybe. For me as a reader though - misspellings would probably make me believe the book wasn't edited very well.

I also have three instances where there are addresses over a city wide public address system - these are fairly short, and as is usually the case with such announcements, they're loud, so I'm doing them in all caps. I usually avoid using ALL CAPS because it's kinda annoying (just like PA announcements), but I can't think of a better way to do it.