Suggestions for Displaying 'texting'

[alextasy]

i have generally tried to refrain from including 'texting' in stories.

Unfortunately, despite efforts to get around it, a story in progress needs to include a few 'texting' conversations.

i'm looking for suggestions on how to handle that, mostly from a formatting perspective. Some of the concerns:

* How to clearly indicate that a conversation is occurring without the use of quotation marks?
* Will tabs be maintained with any specific spacing?
* Does Literotica support any sort of single-line spacing? (i.e., shift-Enter carriage return or line feed - never can remember which is which)
* Methods for separating the two speakers? Any way to place on on the left, one on the right, and keep them aligned in any reasonable fashion?
* Ideas for delineating the different user names from their message? Right arrow/left arrow?
* Character formatting for user names and messages? Bold for names? Do italics confuse the reader?

Other recommendations?

Suggested examples of stories that show successful formatting for this?

I don't think Strunk and White covers this. Thanks for any guidance anyone can offer.

Best Regards
-a

 

[SimonDoom]

i have generally tried to refrain from including 'texting' in stories.

Unfortunately, despite efforts to get around it, a story in progress needs to include a few 'texting' conversations.

i'm looking for suggestions on how to handle that, mostly from a formatting perspective. Some of the concerns:

* How to clearly indicate that a conversation is occurring without the use of quotation marks?
* Will tabs be maintained with any specific spacing?
* Does Literotica support any sort of single-line spacing? (i.e., shift-Enter carriage return or line feed - never can remember which is which)
* Methods for separating the two speakers? Any way to place on on the left, one on the right, and keep them aligned in any reasonable fashion?
* Ideas for delineating the different user names from their message? Right arrow/left arrow?
* Character formatting for user names and messages? Bold for names? Do italics confuse the reader?

Other recommendations?

Suggested examples of stories that show successful formatting for this?

I don't think Strunk and White covers this. Thanks for any guidance anyone can offer.

Best Regards
-a

I've had some stories with texting. Texting is a vital part of modern erotic communication, so it makes sense to include it.

I've just used quotation marks. I replace "said" with "texted," or where appropriate I leave off the tag line:

"See you at your house," he texted.

"Looking forward to it," she texted.

"Me too."

My view is that readers tend to tune out tag lines, and they're less obtrusive than you think they are as an author.

A similar alternative, since text is written rather than spoken, would be to do it as above but render the texting in italics. But that takes formatting using html codes on this site. I prefer to dispense with that and just use quotation marks.

From what I have been able to tell, after doing some research, there is no one definitive format for rendering text messages in fiction. There may be publisher guidelines I am unaware of, but that wouldn't matter much here. The only really important thing is to be consistent and clear.

 

[HisArpy]

I use Guillemets (< >) for text dialog. It's not 'speech' so quotations don't work. For places where I can, I change the font to Courier too. Lit doesn't support font changes (as I learned) so that doesn't work here. However, the Guillemots DO work:

"Mom, we're out of milk." Angie wasn't happy at that development, she liked her mid-afternoon glass of milk.
Carmen picked up her phone and tapped the screen.

<Can U stop and get milk?>
<Y>
<TY>

"Your father will get some on his way home," she told her daughter. "You'll just have to wait."


I didn't need to put anything else in the above example to show it's text rather than dialog or narrative.

Someone will probably come along to quote the Chicago style manual and what it suggests. What I find is that the style manual is fine for technical writing but for fiction, it's not the be-all-end-all authority.

 

[Voboy]

I’ve tried a few things, but now I feel that SimonDoom has it right: texting is ubiquitous now, and it’s best to just treat it as dialogue for the most part, as you’d treat a phone conversation. I do italicize texted content, but I punctuate just as I would a normal bit of face-to-face dialogue.

I suspect I’ll eventually stop doing even that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Read this thread, same topic, a month ago:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1466579

 

[alextasy]

Most Helpful!

Read this thread, same topic, a month ago:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1466579

Thanks, electricblue66! i'd done some searches but didn't find that thread. It covered a lot of the issues, and gave me what i needed.

Best Regards,
-a