What's the Best Way to Write "Text-Speak"?

When I did mine, I put it in italics, no quotes because it felt more like she was reading than talking. I labeled it with action or thoughts, but only from the MC's POV, so readers would know who sent the next next message. I have also seen it where people put the character's name before the text. My examples are garbage, but try to see through the mess.

My phone pinged as I shoved through the door. I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. Wintermin had texted me.
Awthurmy out. Take care. DNT engage.
Below was a picture of the mall. Probably to prove it was him texting, not Awthurmy.
I texted him back I would.

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My phone buzzed again.
R U here?
Yes.

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konstantineblacke said:

Okay, I hope this is in the right place (and if it's been mentioned before I can't find it so sorry if it has).

I don't know if there are any 'rules' about it, and the books I've read all do it differently, but what is the best way to put "text speak" into a story? As in, there is a section where two characters are 'texting' each other, how is it best to represent this?


I've been going with a new paragraph, italics, and written a little in actual text speak (so no formal grammar rules), like this:


Hey John meet me at 11 at the coffee shop. Got something to tell u.


Or would you put it into quotation marks? Or not put into italics (One book I read put the MC texts in normal font, but the replies in italics--they've also off-set the replies to mimic actual texting and how it appears on a screen. Thoughts.

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I use texting as a potential method of making the story more interesting, after long passages of face-to-face dialogue or on-the-phone dialogue.

Using italics, I work at editing out all the extraneous words that 'real' people would also leave out.

Here's an alternate example with your text:

John meet 11 at coffee shop. Something to tell u.

My protagonist is deaf and used a ten-key flip phone in 2001 as an alternative to (and relief from) narrative and signing ASL for his part of dialog.

I also used italics, but because times and dates were important, I included those details from actual phone messages in the first message. However, subsequent messages were without them:

Cool old tractor. Did you buy it? Jim C. 4:02 PM, April 15, 2001.

No. Just thought you might be interested. Jeff P.

Thx. Appreciate the thought. Jim C.

Welcome. Later. Jeff P.

Hope you don't mind if I chime in. I think it might depend on how conversational you want to show texting. I know a few people IRL who are more present in their text conversations than they are in-person. If your MC is like that, you might want to portray texting as close to spoken dialog as possible.
A formatting example:

1
“Who are you texting?” Bob asked.

“Bobs here so annoying,” she texted Rachel.

I wonder if he knows Rachel? she thought to herself.


2
“Who are you texting?” Bob asked.

Bobs here so annoying, she texted Rachel.

I wonder if he knows Rachel? she thought to herself.


3
“Who are you texting?” Bob asked.

“Bobs here so annoying,” she texted Rachel.

I wonder if he knows Rachel? she thought to herself.





1 doesn't work at all. When you first see it, you think she's speaking out load. It's only the dialog tag at the end that let's you know what's going on.

2 has the same issue, except that you think she's thinking to herself. It you tried to mix in actual thoughts it would soon become confusing. It also has the additional problem of making mistakes in the character's texts look like errors in your writing.

So obviously, I'm suggesting 3: quotation marks and italics. It might be confusing at first, but I think most readers will pick it up after a line or two. It works with or without dialog tags, so you can write text conversations exactly like regular dialog. And I don't think you'd ever need to show italics within a text message, because no one texts in italics.

I have considered using a different font for the phone text in a story.

I read a book a while back and the author used bold letters while texting. I think it doesn't really matter which way it is done as long there is a clear indication that the character is texting or receiving a message.

RhysBC said:

I have considered using a different font for the phone text in a story.

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Summer89 said:

I read a book a while back and the author used bold letters while texting. I think it doesn't really matter which way it is done as long there is a clear indication that the character is texting or receiving a message.

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Unless you self-publish or are Stephen King and publishers gladly rush to print your novels exactly as they're received, most publishers of first-time novels want standard fonts (usually Courier or Times Roman) with no variations except italics where customary: book titles, names of ships and bridges, foreign words and phrases, special emphasis, etcetera.

Lately, etcetera has included thoughts and other unspoken dialog like interpretation of ASL signs and common hearie gestures:

Showing a raised thumb indicated I'm okay.

These days, if you comprehend the slightest thing about contextualism and linguistic analysis, you are lightyears ahead of the pack. Knowing how to treat every word like a variable, with no intrinsic meaning or value, allows me to skim technical journals and immediately locate logic errors, without having to read a word. That might sound strange, but their bad logic is detectable in the shapes of the paragraphs they write, and usually I only need to read the first paragraph to see what to look for. For strictly technical purposes, you have two choices: Go strictly old school, or be prepared to open your mind to the possibility all our words are gibberish.

^^^ That’s gotta be a bot? Or a chemical imbalance.

I used courier font for email messages.

Italics I use very sparingly for emphasis.

Has anyone here read Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian?

Published about a year ago in the New Yorker to great buzz as the piece was pulled out of the slush pile (which rarely happens with the New Yorker) and she got a HUGE book deal out of it. I don't particularly care for the story because all the characters are horrible people I would never ever want to hang out with or to even send Christmas cards to. But I do teach the story in my creative writing classes because the piece is a great example of how to handle texting inside a story, and Roupenian uses quotes.

In one of my own stories (up for workshop at the UNH MFA program on Tuesday), I included texting but used italics.

Texting is such a new phenomenon but yet a part of our everyday existence that it's important, I think, for authors to figure out how to handle the medium within their own writing. But I also believe the jury is out on how to do it well. Until the grammar for texts within a prose piece is codified, the best bet is consistency. And, in addition, what you want to emphasize within the writing. In Roupenian's piece, she (I assume) wanted to emphasize the everdayness of texting, so quotes worked well for her. In my piece, I wanted to highlight and call attention to what was being said through the texts, and changing the look of the font accomplishes that, drawing attention to the words on the page.

There's a good little article on situational code switching here if you are interested more in texting and grammar.