Putting Text In Italics

Uggg said:

Yup I would certainly agree that italics would be my first choice and it is only in a very complex situation that I might need more than that.

In regards to what you said about the subvocals I would agree if it were only going to occur a few times but if there is going to be a lot of that type of dialogue in a long story I would definitely prefer it my way (As a reader or writer).

This is what google had to say about possessives when a name ends in 's':

'What is the possessive form of Thomas?
That is Thomas' chair. That's the Thomases' dog. The construction "Thomas's" is wrong. To form the possessive of a plural proper noun, add only an apostrophe.'

And also:

'How do you write the possessive form of a name ending in s?
Rule: To show singular possession of a name ending in s or z, some writers add just an apostrophe. Others also add another s.'

So I think my way was right but your might be as well.

Uggg

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You are right that you can find support for both ways of doing it.

But I think it depends in part on the sound of the s at the end of the word. Sound it out. When you have a soft "s", as in Thomas, how would you speak it? I think you would say Thomas's (Thomas ez). You wouldn't just say "Thomas watch." You would say "Thomas ez watch."

But if the name ended in a "z" sound, like "Socrates", you might say "Socratez watch" as opposed to Socratez ez watch."

US Supreme Court Clarence Thomas (perhaps the most authoritative US Thomas) supports your usage. He thinks it should be Thomas with an apostrophe. But his former colleague David Souter thought it should be "Thomas's."

On that note, I'm going to dinner now.

Uggg said:

Oh, I've seen it a few times in Scifi novels and even in fantasy where gods communicate with avatars etc... Bold or 'all caps' is sometimes used in the same way. I think I recall reading a book where a different font was used for this as well, can't remember what it was though.

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Pratchett's "Discworld" uses small caps with no quotes for the "voice" of Death. Might be what you're thinking of?

SimonDoom said:

I've always thought of underlining and italics use to be functionally interchangeable, so they're never used together.

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There is an important difference between bold, underlining, and italics.

Italics provide local emphasis: you notice it at the point where you read the italicised word, but not before then.

Bold provides global emphasis: it catches your attention even before you get to the bolded word. So in reading this post, you probably pay attention to my bolded "global" before you see my italicised "local".

Bold can be really effective in situations where you don't expect people to read the whole document in order, and you want to help them navigate it quickly. For example, if I was writing a glossary of biological terms:

"Kleptogyny, also known as the sneaky fucker strategy, refers to a reproductive strategy where subordinate males pretend to be females in order to deceive a dominant male and gain access to his mates."

Anybody looking for a definition of "kleptogyny" or SFS can quickly spot those terms while scanning through; they don't have to read every word on the page to find what they're after.

This effect is rarely desirable in fiction writing, where you normally want people to start at the start, read all the words, and finish at the end. For that reason, italics are generally preferable in fiction.

Underlining falls somewhere between the two: it gives some level of global emphasis, but not as strong as bolding text. One consideration here is that in online resources its standard use is to flag a hyperlink, so readers may be confused if you use it for other reasons.

And as electricblue66 points out, any of these may come across very differently, or not at all, for people using non-default ways to read your story.

SimonDoom said:

You are right that you can find support for both ways of doing it.

But I think it depends in part on the sound of the s at the end of the word. Sound it out. When you have a soft "s", as in Thomas, how would you speak it? I think you would say Thomas's (Thomas ez). You wouldn't just say "Thomas watch." You would say "Thomas ez watch."

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It once made a difference, but it was regularized by the Chicago Manual of Style as of the 16th edition. Both names with an s/x/z sounding ending and ones without are 's. (7.15-7.17) Examples given in these sections:

Marx's theories
Jesus's adherents
Berlioz's works
Tacitus's Histories
Borges's library
Dickens's novels
Malraux's masterpiece

Descartes's dreams
Francois's efforts
Camus's novels

Uggg said:

Wow eb,

You always blow me away with the things you say you know. I value the feedback and suggestions you have given me in the past and I confess I hadn't even considered this.

I do have blind friend here on lit who uses software like you describe so I will ask him about that.

Uggg

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I occasionally use the audio-bot on my kindle to get a feel for the flow of my text. It's not a bad reader albeit with an American accent I can't change - she's not annoying but I'd prefer an English or ideally Irish accent, but I can't have everything for free . She reads italics as plain text.

electricblue66 said:

Correct. You can also use bold <b> and </b>.

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Could you give an example of what that would look like? I mean, write a sentence and show how you'd insert it.

carnivalslaughter said:

Could you give an example of what that would look like? I mean, write a sentence and show how you'd insert it.

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You'd write <b>bold like this</b> and <i>italics like this</>, and it would preview like this: bold, italics.

If possible, having Bold and Italics buttons in the story upload box would definitely make things easier, at least for me.

ChuckWolf said:

If possible, having Bold and Italics buttons in the story upload box would definitely make things easier, at least for me.

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The upload box isn't really a great place to be composing a story; in general you're much better off writing it in a text editor/word processor of your choice and then pasting it into the upload box.

electricblue66 said:

You'd write <b>bold like this</b> and <i>italics like this</>, and it would preview like this: bold, italics.

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When using italics for emphasis ("you can't be serious"), I'd recommend using <em></em> instead of <i></i>. For most readers it will display exactly the same, but for things like screen readers it helps the technology figure out how to translate the text into speech.

Bramblethorn said:

"Kleptogyny, also known as the sneaky fucker strategy, refers to a reproductive strategy where subordinate males pretend to be females in order to deceive a dominant male and gain access to his mates."

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Damn it, I did not expect to come into a thread on the use of italics and leave with seconds later with a fully realized story outline. I'll add it to my to do list [sigh].

TheRedChamber said:

Damn it, I did not expect to come into a thread on the use of italics and leave with seconds later with a fully realized story outline. I'll add it to my to do list [sigh].

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*cackles evilly*

https://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives may be a source of further inspiration.

Bramblethorn said:

*cackles evilly*

https://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives may be a source of further inspiration.

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No more inspiration until I've done a lot more perspiration.

(Had a look, it's interesting)