Italicize beginning and ending punctuation when an entire sentence is italicized?

Gregg Bell

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Eg. I want to italicize the below sentence in its entirety.

"Are you going to believe him?"

Is it

"Are you going to believe him?"

or

"Are you going to believe him?"

or

"Are you going to believe him?"


In other words, should the punctuation at the beginning and end of a fully italicized sentence also be italicized?
 

paradoxikay

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I go with "Are you going to believe him?" in my own writing. The quotation marks aren't part of the sentence, but the question mark is.

I'm not 100% sure that's correct, but my beta readers have never complained? :p
 

Bufty

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Not a direct answer, but are you sure you want to italicise the whole sentence?
 

blacbird

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Italicize the whole damn thing if you want the entire sentence italicized. Make your life easy. No agent/editor is going to give two sloth farts on a warm Amazon night whether you do or don't.

caw
 

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This is a typesetting decision, and not one editors really care about; it's usually a house style decision based on the type used.

Just pick something and be consistent.
 

DarienW

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This is a typesetting decision, and not one editors really care about; it's usually a house style decision based on the type used.

Just pick something and be consistent.

In my research, I was told to not italicize the punctuation. I've been ignoring that for commas in the midst, and I've heard that the question marks can look awkward and crashing if they are not italicized, but like AW admin says, the final decision is from the house style. It's hella easier to italicize the whole thing though.

:)
 

Maryn

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The Chicago Manual of Style, which a lot of publishers use even though it's not intended for fiction, says it depends on why you want to italicize.

If your line of dialogue is remembered by a POV character rather than happening in the story's live time, then both the words spoken and the quotation marks are italicized.
Hadn't Biff said "Are you going to believe him?"

If your line of dialogue is imagined, it appears in italics without quotation marks, and unless it starts the sentence, the first word is not capitalized.


I could practically hear Biff's whined are you going to believe him?

If your line of dialogue is internal thought by the POV character, it's in italics, no quotation marks.


She filled out the application, ignoring Biff's Are you going to believe him? while she listed her last three addresses.


If the words are mouthed but not said out loud, the words are in italics.


I finally caught Loman's eye. Are you going to believe him? I mouthed.

And last, if it's recorded or synthesized speech (from the TV, radio, computer, answering machine, phone, etc.) it's a matter of house style, often italics without quotation marks.


On the flat-screen, Biff Loman held papers but clearly read from cue cards. Are you going to believe him?

In the end, though, it always comes down to house style. Some publishers are rigid and others don't really distinguish among the different subtleties that would require italicizing speech and their CMOS rules. As already said by others, house style rules over all, and your best bet is to select your own "rule" and stick to it religiously. If it's different from your publisher's style, they'll change it.

Maryn, real good at muddying the waters
 

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In my research, I was told to not italicize the punctuation. I've been ignoring that for commas in the midst, and I've heard that the question marks can look awkward and crashing if they are not italicized, but like AW admin says, the final decision is from the house style. It's hella easier to italicize the whole thing though.

:)

The main thing is to be internally consistent.
 

Gregg Bell

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I go with "Are you going to believe him?" in my own writing. The quotation marks aren't part of the sentence, but the question mark is.

I'm not 100% sure that's correct, but my beta readers have never complained? :p

Thanks para. That's usually what I do, but lately I've been hearing the question mark shouldn't be in italics as well.
 

Gregg Bell

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In my research, I was told to not italicize the punctuation. I've been ignoring that for commas in the midst, and I've heard that the question marks can look awkward and crashing if they are not italicized, but like AW admin says, the final decision is from the house style. It's hella easier to italicize the whole thing though.

:)

Thanks Darien. Your way is exactly where I'm at now. And yeah, I'm not going to get crazy about punctuating internal punctuation unless it's a really unusual situation.
 

Gregg Bell

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The Chicago Manual of Style, which a lot of publishers use even though it's not intended for fiction, says it depends on why you want to italicize.

If your line of dialogue is remembered by a POV character rather than happening in the story's live time, then both the words spoken and the quotation marks are italicized.
Hadn't Biff said "Are you going to believe him?"

If your line of dialogue is imagined, it appears in italics without quotation marks, and unless it starts the sentence, the first word is not capitalized.


I could practically hear Biff's whined are you going to believe him?

If your line of dialogue is internal thought by the POV character, it's in italics, no quotation marks.


She filled out the application, ignoring Biff's Are you going to believe him? while she listed her last three addresses.


If the words are mouthed but not said out loud, the words are in italics.


I finally caught Loman's eye. Are you going to believe him? I mouthed.

And last, if it's recorded or synthesized speech (from the TV, radio, computer, answering machine, phone, etc.) it's a matter of house style, often italics without quotation marks.


On the flat-screen, Biff Loman held papers but clearly read from cue cards. Are you going to believe him?

In the end, though, it always comes down to house style. Some publishers are rigid and others don't really distinguish among the different subtleties that would require italicizing speech and their CMOS rules. As already said by others, house style rules over all, and your best bet is to select your own "rule" and stick to it religiously. If it's different from your publisher's style, they'll change it.

Maryn, real good at muddying the waters

Wow, thanks Maryn. I'd say that cleared the waters. (I took a screenshot of your post and put it on my Desktop.)
 

Gregg Bell

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Thank you for all the great help! Three more items please.

1) This is a novel and my character is talking in anglicized Spanish, but I suppose for punctuation's sake it could be all regular Spanish. And say the sentence is its own paragraph.

"Amigo, howo mucho por los machetes?"

Obviously the words are going to italicized, but how about the punctuation (incl. the question mark)? (And I realize that if this were a Spanish novel, a question should actually have a question mark in front too but I don't think I'm needing that.)

2) A character is reciting his own poem. Again in a novel.

"Radishes are red / Violets are blue / Punctuation is hard / And so is getting the flu."

Words italicized? Punctuation? A better way of doing the breaks than forward slashes?

3) Similar but slightly different.

"Okay, guys, here's my poem: Radishes are red / Violets are blue / Punctuation is hard / And so is getting the flu."

How to punctuate and italicize?
 

CatherineDunn

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If - as in your example - the sentence is a complete line of dialogue and a full sentence (complete in itself), then yes, the punctuation (in this case, the question mark) should be italicised, but the quotation marks shouldn't.

That also goes for example (1) in Gregg's post above. Also, it's correct that the punctuation should be the usual English (US or UK, as appropriate!) rather than Spanish.

(2) If the poem is only short, as given, you could either use forward slashes for the breaks or just commas. You could even break the lines, but then technically you'd need new opening quotation marks for each line, which IMO would look fussy.

(3) I'd be inclined to go for just commas in the example, but I'm now wondering if you could get away with breaking the lines without using opening quotation marks ... since it's so short.
 

Gregg Bell

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If - as in your example - the sentence is a complete line of dialogue and a full sentence (complete in itself), then yes, the punctuation (in this case, the question mark) should be italicised, but the quotation marks shouldn't.

That also goes for example (1) in Gregg's post above. Also, it's correct that the punctuation should be the usual English (US or UK, as appropriate!) rather than Spanish.

(2) If the poem is only short, as given, you could either use forward slashes for the breaks or just commas. You could even break the lines, but then technically you'd need new opening quotation marks for each line, which IMO would look fussy.

(3) I'd be inclined to go for just commas in the example, but I'm now wondering if you could get away with breaking the lines without using opening quotation marks ... since it's so short.

Thanks a lot, Catherine. :)