Formatting text(s)

[ElectricBlue]

Sounds dreadful. ;-)

(My partner and I have been known to sit at opposite ends of the house chatting via Skype. I like text.)

We even play board games - quite unexpected!

 

[Bramblethorn]

We even play board games - quite unexpected!

Ah, now, that I can get behind. We have a shelf full of board games, and a large pile of all the ones that don't fit in the shelf.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Yes. It's a completely alien use of straight brackets. Quotes and italics are used for such similar constructions that readers will probably read right through either with understanding. Publishers don't like using italics much, though.

[re. using straight brackets to denote text messages]

IMHO yes, it would be.
~snip~
So readers are already used to italics meaning a lot of different things, and one more isn't such a big deal, as long as context makes it clear which is which.

Thanks for the clarifications. As I'd said, these are not in published stories, so it's certainly easy enough to fix.

But I'm with you 100% on calling while driving. I've had to make it clear to work minions that being late to a meeting is excusable, getting yourself killed trying to dial in while driving to the office is not.

Tongue in cheek. I forever despair over three annoying phone habits:

2) - and my son does this and still hasn't learned - calls me from the car on the way to visit, says I'll be there in five minutes, and proceeds to have a conversation. That's a variant of 1.b above - it can wait, surely to God it can wait; and meanwhile his situational awareness in the car is compromised because he's bloody yacking on the phone. "But it's hands-free, Dad." "Yes, I know it's hands-free, but you're still distracted..."

Tin cans and string, Belle, tin cans and string .

I don't talk on the phone while driving. Ever. And if I'm talking to someone and I realize they're driving, I usually ask if they don't just want to call me back when they get stopped. Most of the time the other person declines. But, as you say EB, it's not about what the person's hands are doing (in this case anyway ) it's about what their brain is doing (in all cases).

I prefer texting in a couple of situations 1) short pithy messages that are not urgent and/or don't need any reply at all, 2) when I'm trying to be discreet and the conversation doesn't need to be long, and 3) in communicating with my sister because I can think about and carefully craft a response. It's a long, long, story, but switching to text based communication has actually greatly improved my relationship with her.

Also, I'm the weirdo who texts in complete, spell checked sentences with proper grammar and punctuation. So I'm hardly representative of the average user.

I'm on the phone a lot at work. The phone in my office rings, and I'm compelled to answer it. So, when i'm not at work, I hardly ever answer the phone. Because I don't have to. But if someone texts me, I'll at least read what they wrote.

The mores and conventions around communication have changed so much since the advent of "smart" phones, it's hard to keep up.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Sounds dreadful. ;-)

(My partner and I have been known to sit at opposite ends of the house chatting via Skype. I like text.)

Damn. And I though *I* was an introvert...

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Also, I'm the weirdo who texts in complete, spell checked sentences with proper grammar and punctuation. So I'm hardly representative of the average user.

I'm on the phone a lot at work. The phone in my office rings, and I'm compelled to answer it. So, when i'm not at work, I hardly ever answer the phone. Because I don't have to. But if someone texts me, I'll at least read what they wrote.

The mores and conventions around communication have changed so much since the advent of "smart" phones, it's hard to keep up.

Glad I'm not alone in the texting grammatically correct department. It seemed pretty lonely in here lately. I do use some chat or text speak like abbreviations and such, but I just can't bring myself to ignore commas or capitalization or whatever. That habit is really hard to break, even if it makes my texting a lot slower than it needs to be.

Unread notifications give me anxiety, I just have to know what it is about. Be it Skype, Discord, texts or emails. It's not helping my productivity, but generally those mostly happen in the evening anyway, so that's not too bad.

 

[JPGmvny]

To the best of my knowledge, the world of modern English hasn’t settled on any one rule when it comes to writing out text messages or internet chat logs in prose. There is no specific punctuation or grammatical rules for it, is there?

How do you as an author go about it? What formatting works best and looks acceptable to your eye when writing out a story? Do you keep the text attached to the related paragraph as you would with a regular conversation? Or do you break it out separately to stand out?

I do this: {Suzanne: When will I see you LOL?}

And each text is its own paragraph. I've seen others doing it in a similar fashion.

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