text chat

[maedhros21]

Hey guys,

I am new at writing and had a punctuation, format question for all of you. If I am writing a text conversation do i treat it like a live conversation between two characters? Normal usage for quotation marks and all?

Also what is the correct way to write an emote. ie. smiley face, tongue face, so on ?

 

[NaokoSmith]

Hullo sweet pea, welcome to the board.


I haven't written text but I wrote a story where the characters were engaged in online chat. I wrote it in txt spk, rather than writing it out in full, that seemed more realistic.

I think I may have written the chat speak in italics. You can do that in a Lit story like this

<i> u r cool lol </i>

I'm not sure about the emoticons. You could put the indicators for them etc. People quite often just do that in messages, rather than put in the smiley face.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Hahaha! I wrote out those smilies and Lit turned them into emoticons! Maybe that will just happen in your story!

I wrote: : ) and ; )

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hey guys,

I am new at writing and had a punctuation, format question for all of you. If I am writing a text conversation do i treat it like a live conversation between two characters? Normal usage for quotation marks and all?

Also what is the correct way to write an emote. ie. smiley face, tongue face, so on ?

I don't know if the style guides have a ruling on this, but I like to keep different types of "speech" visually distinct. For an extended text conversation I'd do something like this:

sweetsweetjane: Hi there
HotNHard4U: HI THERE ;-P
sweetsweetjane: your caps lock appears to be broken.

 

[nosliwec]

I did this recently on my first story. For a simple text and response, I'd probably do a normal conversation like:

James texted me, "You heading over?"

I responded, "Outside your door now." James came to the door and let me in.

For a lengthy conversation, I used < and > much like quotations. I had to use HTML coding to get them past the submission page. &lt for < and &gt for >. I wanted a look that was similar to the look you get from on current smartphones. Also, except for very common text speech I wrote them out since phones will find words close to what was being spelled That and phones these days don't need text messages condensed like they used to.

 

[PayDay]

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1048243

The Search link is your friend.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't know if the style guides have a ruling on this,

No, there has been no formulation for this by the authorities yet, so it's still up to the inventive to find something that eventually will be approved. Putting the text in full caps or in italics probably isn't going to get approved, as the authorities are moving away from those in other usage. But, who knows? Until then, consistency and clarity with the readers on intent would be the controlling issues.

 

[Bramblethorn]

No, there has been no formulation for this by the authorities yet, so it's still up to the inventive to find something that eventually will be approved. Putting the text in full caps or in italics probably isn't going to get approved, as the authorities are moving away from those in other usage. But, who knows? Until then, consistency and clarity with the readers on intent would be the controlling issues.

Using full caps to mark out text chat would be a bad idea in any case. Text chat already uses caps to indicate tone and requires lower-case for some emoticons. Forcing everything to caps would destroy a lot of nuance.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Here's how I recently handled it for short exchange - namely, like conversation:



Ten days had passed since their conversation. Could détente follow a relationship that had never been hostile? He sent a text. One word and nothing more without a prompt response from her, "Hello."

Her reply came within seconds, "Hi there!"

"Are we really still friends?" he asked. She would understand his blind spot, how he sometimes took people at face value without catching deeper meanings.


Hope that helps!

 

[JKendallDane]

I have several stories where texting or instant messaging is included, and found the simplest way to set it off was to use single parentheses.

That way it denotes something being quoted but not in the sense of it being spoken words.

Seems to work well when you want to make a character's unspoken thoughts stand out also.

 

[sr71plt]

Single quotes might work for Literotica, but they aren't accepted for quotes in U.S. publishing style. British and Canadian styles use them but for entirely different purposes.

 

[JKendallDane]

Single quotes might work for Literotica, but they aren't accepted for quotes in U.S. publishing style. British and Canadian styles use them but for entirely different purposes.

I'll worry about "the rules" when Simon & Schuster want to send me an advance.

 

[nosliwec]

I didn't use italics because most people regard italics as inner dialogue. I figured bolded text would denote emphasis like: Do NOT go into the pool. Parenthesis are used in a variety of ways, already. I thought a different font, but I haven't the foggiest idea how to do that on Literotica. I, also, didn't want to constantly put the sender and receiver's names before each text message. To me, that made my imply the reader's were idiots and couldn't figure out who was texting. I figured square brackets or the greater than and less than angled brackets would be best served for my intents. So far have yet to hear any complaints in my story I used them in.

 

[49greg]

I had a couple of text messages in my latest story, I just put them each on a separate line and spelled things out fully, even if in a brief sort of way.

In real life I spell out texts to my wife pretty fully, - figured short text speech was for kids who can't stay away from phones and are too impatient to spell things right. So I had the character in the story do it. I just had his wife in the story have a mental chuckle about how he spelled out his texts fully.

I thought it worked out OK, in the story line the wife noticed the sound of her phone beeping the text alert sound, then looked and read the messages, so it was fully explained.

That would be too cumbersome if there were a lot of messages throughout the story.

 

[AirRichard101]

Being set in my ways and fighting technology-creep in writing, I will simply avoid using 'texting' in stories except describing such like unquoted dialogue. The same holds true even in informal things like these posts. That's just the #oldfart in me.