When Two Characters Are Texting.

I use italics. I guess to me, all-caps is the more jarring of the two. But, there's lots of ways to skin a cat.

I use italics, too. I have seen texts displayed in a different font in trade-published books, but I don't know if it's acceptable to submit like that.

I had to do research on this recently, and apparently there's no industry standard on this. I use italics for mine. The most common advice I saw is to keep it consistent and clear. If it's clear the characters are texting then you're good to go. I agree that capitals is a bit jarring.

maggiee19 said:

Currently, I use caps lock when I write the text messages my characters send to each other. Is that good, or should I change it to italics or something?

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All caps are hard to read, plus they're always going to look like shouting. I would advise italics or maybe even a different font (a sans serif font would best mimic the appearance of a text message). Speaking as a reader, I wouldn't want to have to read what is essentially dialogue in all caps.

I have this happening in my WIP,so the answers are very helpful. I like the italics idea,capitalizing everything does seems like your shouting because that's what they mean.

For me, switching to courier font works.

Follow-up question in this thread: when characters are texting, do most people put the name of the person sending the text before the text itself? Like:

Stan: call me

This is what I've seen in the last few books I read that had texting or online chatting. If a character is like, bugging a girl to go out with him, though, and sends her four texts in a row, does seeing "Stan, Stan, Stan, Stan" on every line with no replies start to look obnoxious?

I'd switch to a different font too. That makes sense to me.

I'd put the name too, but I'm no expert.

As for whether it looks obnoxious, I don't think so.

Hopefully, someone more capable to handle this swoops in with an answer.

For many years previous to the invention of texting, the default when a character was reading something, like a letter, was italics. I don't see why italics would not be perfectly acceptable, since you are incorporating "written words" into your story.

ETA: Not sure how emojis are going to be indicated. Your call.

Here is a blog post I found on this topic a few month ago from Dan Alatorre.

Interesting, thank you!

This is very interesting. I'm writing messages in the wip I'm working on at the moment and the way I'm doing it right now is just having the name and the text on a new line and formatting it by indenting it and italicising it as well.


I think it stops any confusion between anything (like using italics elsewhere) and looks neat too. And you can add beats between messages in normal formatting if you want to add actions and thoughts.

Although I also think it depends on who is texting and who the audience is. My WIP is YA Scifi with two seventeen year olds messaging and I think this works really well. Whereas in an adult contemporary, for example, mixing it into the beats more like dialogue like in the blog post looks better to me. Very interesting.

First, I would bold the text, and the word "you" would be from the character whose POV I was writing in that particular scene.

You said: How's it going?
Stacy says: Not bad. U?
You said: Same.

I do pretty much the same thing still, except I don't bold anymore. I just write in Verdana font for text, and my main writing font is Times New Roman.

He was in the canned food aisle when Bill's phone chimed with an incoming text.

Stacy says: How long you gonna be?
You said: About 10 mins.
Stacy says: K.

If you are self-pubbing, it doesn't matter. Just make it visually distinctive. There are now books out that include texting, so you will notice about half a dozen different ways of this being done.
Or somehow make it clear it's texting and not dialogue. ("Hey, how are you?" texted John. "Fine, thanx," Joanne texted back. )
If you are sending it to a publisher, they will take care of the formatting

indianroads said:

For me, switching to courier font works.

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This might work. But a caution: Your manuscript is not the place to play around much with alternative fonts. That is an issue for a publisher if and when a piece is accepted for publication. If it is clear that the messages are texts, leave the formatting issue up to an editor.

caw

I asked my editor this question (big trade pub) and she said there's no standard, yet. They deal with this case by case depending on the feel of the book.

I personally, do this.

Hbooks said:

Follow-up question in this thread: when characters are texting, do most people put the name of the person sending the text before the text itself? Like:

Stan: call me

?

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Depending on the length of the texting, and how much of it is in your book, you can even try to mimic the look of a phone screen with your texts in it with images, although it would require some creativity. Also, remember, if you ever switch your word processor to a different type, it can possibly screw the whole thing up. I did this once with a Bold Circle with some text in it, when I was referencing something written on a calendar.

My personal preference would be to switch to a different font. Probably Courier or some similar "typewriter" font. That may be a holdover from my background in mathematics/programming, though. In those books, computer code is usually written in a different font to distinguish it from the main text or mathematical formulae, so I'm quite used to understanding the author's meaning when the font changes.

The idea of mimicking the look of a phone screen is intriguing, and in small doses, I think it could be a nice touch. It it shows up more than a couple times, though, I think I'd find it distracting as a reader.

But as others have said, the publisher can take care of formatting, so unless you're self-publishing, the most important thing in the manuscript is clarity. Then the publisher can figure out how it "ought" to look.