Thoughts is quote marks?

[human_male]

Is it correct to put a character's thoughts in quote marks? For instance

"Oh damn I've got to go to the toilet again." He thought.

Fanks

 

[carsonshepherd]

Nope, should be in italics. Or, if you want to avoid formatting, just put them as is, offset with commas and beginning with capital letter, into the text.

Velkommen

"Also, there should be a comma at the end of a line of dialogue and not a period," he said. "And no capital H on he," he added.

Helping the world one comma at a time...

 

[sirhugs]

I personally follow a standard that Weird Harold advocated, putting thoughts in single quotes . This distinguishes them from speech, without being visually busy like italics. As a reader, I find italics annoying, and tend to abandon stories which use them.

 

[amicus]

Carson is right...my editor changed all my 'thoughts' to italics and did the caps and the punctuation as cited above...


amicus..

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

It depends. If the thought is part of a stream-of-consciousness style I have nothing, not even a "he thought". Such as:

Freddie felt the hand grab his neck. Fuck, another one of these damn things. He pulled out his pistol and turned.

If I do have a "he thought". I usually just do speech style quotes, BUT I don't separate it into a new paragraph like I do with speech.

Everything else doesn't sit true with me. Perhaps I'll change my mind later.

 

[Weird Harold]

I personally follow a standard that Weird Harold advocated, putting thoughts in single quotes . This distinguishes them from speech, without being visually busy like italics. As a reader, I find italics annoying, and tend to abandon stories which use them.

You misunderstood what I advocate then.

The proper punctuation for "Internal Dialogue" -- literal thoughts -- has traditionlly been to Italicize where the capability of using Italics exists: He thought, What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?

More recent Style Guides say that no quote marks or italics should be used: He thought, What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?

Howver, the more recent style guides don't seem to make a distinction between direct thoucght and indirect thoughts. By their standards, there is no difference in punctuation between:

He thought she was a Babe and wondered if he had chance with her.

and:

He thought, What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?

I think that distinction is important and when Italics is NOT AVAILABLE -- as in a pure ASCII text file or an ASCII text-based information transfer like C&P opertion -- single quotes are more readble than the TeleType convention of identifying Itailcs with slashes:

He thought, 'What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?'

is more readable than:

He thought, /What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?/


Science Fiction and Telepathy put a kink in the punctuation of thoughts because of the need to distinguish between internal thoughts and shared thoughts. There is no official standard that I know of but the unofficial stndrd seems to be asterisks for shared thoughts:

He thought (at his telepathic friend), *What a Babe! I wonder if I've got a chance?*

How you punctuate Thoughts depends on WHERE you plan to publish -- the consensus at Literotica seems to be is that Italics is the preferred punctuation.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Is it correct to put a character's thoughts in quote marks?

The grammatically correct answer is, no. Quotation marks, whether single or double, should only indicate spoken words. Using them to indicate thoughts can confuse readers.

IMHO, italics should only be used, if at all, in short quotes. Italics in long quotes are a nightmare for most readers. There are some UK/US differences, but in the US, single quotation marks indicate a quote within a quote. "As the great W.C.Fields so wisely said, 'Children should be obscene and not heard.'"

HOWEVER, due to the formatting hassles Weird Harold mentioned, it's sometimes necessary to be a little creative with punctuation and formatting. Whatever you do, be consistent.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[snooper]

Although I, too, dislike italics and prefer single quotes for direct thoughts and double quotes for direct speech, I do most heartily agree with Rumple's last sentence, "Whatever you do, be consistent."

As to the punctuation, Carson is right about not using full stops at the end of speech/thought quotations if an attribution follows.

 

[RavenSpirit2k4]

Many (most?) British writers use (used? - I'm not up on current British grammar) single quote marks for speech. People who are accustomed to that may be confused for a moment. If you don't like italics or they're unavailable, I'd recommend the comma method: What a babe!, he thought.

 

[Xelebes]

I personally follow a standard that Weird Harold advocated, putting thoughts in single quotes . This distinguishes them from speech, without being visually busy like italics. As a reader, I find italics annoying, and tend to abandon stories which use them.

I prefer that way too. I only use italics for titles and articles (whatever the correct term for them may be has escaped me.)

 

[sirhugs]

You misunderstood what I advocate then.

I stand corrected. Sorry I misattributed my errors to you.

"Misunderstand" is my middle name. No, I think it is " Misunderstood" is my muddle name.

Anyhow, since I prefer to submit as text not an attached word file, I doubt I will change my practice.

 

[Weird Harold]

Anyhow, since I prefer to submit as text not an attached word file, I doubt I will change my practice.

Italics, bold and underline highlighting are easy to implement here at Lit even if you submit text files or C&P into the submission form. You just have to add the HTML tags in the appropriate places yourself.

IMHO, the argument that Italics is hard to read or looks odd is NOT a reason to adopt an alternate punctuation where they're appropriate. Thoughts aren't the only case where Italics is the preferred or customary method of highlighting or separating a portion of the story -- letters or documents shown/quoted within a story, foreign words and phrases, mild emphasis and many other instances "require" Italics where they can be implemented.

In the end, as long as you're consistent and not to far from what readers have learned to expect as to be outsie of their comfort zone, any punctuation choice that works is acceptable. However, there are rules and conventions established for most punctuation questions and an author ignores them at their own risk -- readers tend to dislike unconventional styles, ofen without even realizing WHY they dislike them.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The grammatically correct answer is, no. Quotation marks, whether single or double, should only indicate spoken words. Using them to indicate thoughts can confuse readers.

IMHO, italics should only be used, if at all, in short quotes. Italics in long quotes are a nightmare for most readers. There are some UK/US differences, but in the US, single quotation marks indicate a quote within a quote. "As the great W.C.Fields so wisely said, 'Children should be obscene and not heard.'"

HOWEVER, due to the formatting hassles Weird Harold mentioned, it's sometimes necessary to be a little creative with punctuation and formatting. Whatever you do, be consistent.

Rumple Foreskin

For me, I don't use quotes, it looks too much like spoken dialogue. But I agree with Rumple totally in one thing, be consistent how ever you choose to do it.

 

[Guest]

Many (most?) British writers use (used? - I'm not up on current British grammar) single quote marks for speech. People who are accustomed to that may be confused for a moment. If you don't like italics or they're unavailable, I'd recommend the comma method: What a babe!, he thought.

I'm not sure, maybe Brits used to, but the most common way now is to italicise internal thoughts. God, I love italics.

Having said that, one of the most successful contemporary British authors, Simon Clark, does just as you stated, the comma method. He does it very well, too.

Lou

 

[fogbank]

It depends. If the thought is part of a stream-of-consciousness style I have nothing, not even a "he thought". Such as:

Freddie felt the hand grab his neck. Fuck, another one of these damn things. He pulled out his pistol and turned.

I agree with this sort of approach. The simplest, easiest to read approach, I think. Obviously, avoid this if you are using a third-person omniscient voice and describing the thoughts of multiple characters. But in most situations, there's little chance of confusing who the thought is attributed to.

 

[Weird Harold]

It depends. If the thought is part of a stream-of-consciousness style I have nothing, not even a "he thought". Such as:

Freddie felt the hand grab his neck. Fuck, another one of these damn things. He pulled out his pistol and turned.

Tagging thoughts -- or spoken dialogue -- is not always necessary, or even desireable in many cases.

However, the problem I hve with this approach is distinguishing between "Narrator commentary" and "character reaction."

Is "Fuck, another of these damn things," and observation by the narrator or the character's thought? To me it isn't clear without a distinction in the way it's punctuated.

In your short example, there isnt an obvious shift in tense or POV, but similar cases it could present a problem of sorts.

Direct thoughts are properly in first person, present tense. The change serves to identify the distinction between a character's thoughts and the narrator's commentary, but it can also be a jarring bit of momentary confusion for a reader -- especially in the context of Amateur Fiction.

Freddie felt the hand grab his neck. Fuck, another one. How many of these damn things do I have to kill? He pulled out his pistol and turned.

In the modified example, the Italics show clearly, "Yes, I meant to change tense and POV for a moment." Leaving them out -- as the most recent version of Strunk and White and other recent style guides recommend -- can leave the reader wondering whether it's a thought or an error on the part of an inexperienced author.

This is a very minor consideration, really, but in a venue filled with many people who can't maintain a single tense and POV through a single paragraph, let alone a whole story, I prefer to make my intended meaning as clear as possible.