Italicize internal thoughts or not?

There are some who think it's redundant to add the 'he thought' tag if you've already put the thought in italics. Does anyone know of any "Authority's" view on this?

Not to derail, but I have another question in the same vein. I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

That could be confusing. In that case, I'd use a second format to indicate other people's thoughts... probably underline.

maestrowork said:

That could be confusing. In that case, I'd use a second format to indicate other people's thoughts... probably underline.

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In the extremely unlikely event the work gets published, how would the publisher show that? I haven't seen underlining in any books I've read, have you?

JoNightshade said:

Anyway, just looking for thoughts: should I continue to italicize his internal thoughts, or would you be comfortable if I simply left them the same as the rest of the text?

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It's a style thing, so long as a reader can clearly distinguish thought from narrative or dialogue. Me, I prefer to keep using italics throughout.

Karen Junker said:

In the extremely unlikely event the work gets published, how would the publisher show that? I haven't seen underlining in any books I've read, have you?

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Another of those tired old typographical holdovers. Underlined text is an old convention for italics, still used and even insisted on by some publishers. A typesetter would interpret the underline as italics.

A double underline is bold.

Yeah, if you really want to write them as a thought, and not a third person description, I would use italics. It will be WAY more confusing having no italics, even if you have heaps of thoughts going on at any given time.

Karen Junker said:

Not to derail, but I have another question in the same vein. I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

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If you're in close third, you don't need to italicize the POV character's thoughts. That leaves you free to italicize the other characters'.

Thanks! You would think I would know this stuff. I really appreciate your help!

Karen Junker said:

I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

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I firmly believe that this can be pulled off in a non-confusing manner. This belief stems in part from a sequence in the Stephen King book "The Drawing of the Three." In that book, a person inhabits the body of an airplane passanger and can speak with the passanger via thoughts. They have a "dialoge" back and forth via italicized thoughts that they're having inside the same shared mind (the airplane passenger's).

It was one of the coolest sequences I've ever read! And it shows that it can be pulled off if you put the proper dialogue tags where they are needed.

I loved it so much that I have been incorporating a similar type of mind-communication between characters in my current WIP. At least in my book, the MC can only speak with one person at any given time, so you'd know exactly who he was talking to, reducing the need for frequent dialogue tags.

Your situation sounds more like the MC could listen in on a variety of people's thoughts during a given scene, but I still think it's perfectly possible with the proper indications.

I say go for it!!!

I think it depends on how tight your third-person PoV is - very tight, verging on 1st but still using third person pronouns, I think works best without italics. Otherwise you end up with a lot of them on every page, which can be hard to read.

I generally don't bother with italics, myself - if an editor asks me to put them in, I'll do it. I do use them to demarcate text that isn't speech, such as a letter being read by a character, or foreign words within an English sentence.

maestrowork said:

It's all about clarity and consistency

In first person, there's no need to italicize (because it's first person!) unless there's ambiguity, or you want to be clear that it's some kind of immediate thoughts:

She walked through the door. She was radiant. Wow, I can just pee my pants how gorgeous she is. Then I caught myself thinking impure thoughts about her.
​

In third person, the general rule is that a direct thought should be italics to be set apart from the narrative:

She walked through the door. She was radiant. Wow, I can just pee my pants how gorgeous she is, he thought. Then he caught himself thinking impure thoughts about her.
​

If it's indirect thought, however, there's no need for italics:

She walked through the door. She was radiant. Wow, he could just pee his pants how gorgeous she was. Then he caught himself thinking impure thoughts about her.
​

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I'd have to second this. I am admittedly old school, but I think this has been the accepted way to do it for a long time.

Big fan for italicized thoughts. I'm also a fan of the fact that by italicizing you can get rid of he thought, she thought, ect... It makes for cleaner prose and cuts down on the word count if your characters have vivid internal monologues.

I don't like italicized thoughts. Too distracting. And it feels old fashioned now days. I prefer smooth, well-written interior monologue.

Karen Junker said:

Not to derail, but I have another question in the same vein. I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

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Any book that has mind reading will confuse the reader if italics are used in both situations.

To avoid this, create a format for the mind reading episodes. Instead of quotes, use >> and << or any other common bracket on your keyboard.

An example.

>>Whoa, she's hot. Shake that rear, baby!<<

Lisa kept walking by, doing her best not to react to his thoughts. Why me, she asked herself, I wish my mind reading powers would go away!

If you establish such unique usage in the beginning and make it clear what it is, your readers will adjust and understand it completely. You can use other keyboard characters, not just the ones I used. Any type of bracketing to show the mind reading abilities can be explored and thus comes the end of such confusion.

I hope that helps.

Karen Junker said:

Not to derail, but I have another question in the same vein. I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

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I would convey her thoughts as internals, no italics except for the rare sentence. The voices and thoughts she hears could then be italicized.

RJK said:

There are some who think it's redundant to add the 'he thought' tag if you've already put the thought in italics. Does anyone know of any "Authority's" view on this?

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I can't point to an 'authority' (but then I don't trust the 'authorities' on writing style...they make up rules that are crap) but I can say that this is something that makes sense for a deep third person. After all, who else is going to be thinking it?

If you are writing something more omniscient, then I supposed the thought tags might be needed.

AuthorGuy said:

My editor told me to either a) italicize, but without any phrase like 'he thought to himself', or b) use single quotes without italics, and 'he thought to himself' is OK. I mostly use the first method, but only for very short thoughts. I don't think in great long paragraphs to myself all the time and find it very unrealistic to read. I present my character's internal states as flashes of emotion or sensation, with a short thought fragment to spell it out if needed.

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Unless you are dealing with a telepathic situation (and frankly, not even then IMO), don't use "he thought to himself" because it's redundant. Who else would he be thinking to? A simple "he thought" is better.

Beth

Karen Junker said:

Not to derail, but I have another question in the same vein. I have a character who hears other people's thoughts and I italicize them. Then she also has internal thoughts about stuff, which I also italicize. Can anyone suggest another way to handle this? I'm afraid I'm going to confuse the reader.

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How does your MC know who owns the thoughts she is hearing? You need strong, individualized characterization to make it clear what thoughts belong to what person. Also the use of action can help. If she hears the thought, Damn, that girl is hot! and she sees a guy nearby ogling a girl, it becomes obvious....or not! This could also be used to interject some misdirection if you wanted. One would assume the guy ogling is the one with the thought, but what if it wasn't and the MC assumed it was? Do the thoughts have a gender to them? That is, can the MC tell if the thought is a man or woman based on how she "receives" the thought? Or does she have to rely on context to figure it out?

Finally, when necessary, use tags but try to use them as little as possible.

Beth

Brutal Mustang said:

I don't like italicized thoughts. Too distracting. And it feels old fashioned now days. I prefer smooth, well-written interior monologue.

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What about smooth, well-written interior monologue in italics?

Beth

VoireyLinger said:

I can't point to an 'authority' (but then I don't trust the 'authorities' on writing style...they make up rules that are crap) but I can say that this is something that makes sense for a deep third person. After all, who else is going to be thinking it?

If you are writing something more omniscient, then I supposed the thought tags might be needed.

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I agree. Adding the 'he thought' after something italicized is unnecessary most of the time. It's like writing that someone nodded their head--'their head' is redundant; all you need is 'he nodded.' I think Karen's example might be an exception, though, and a situation where the thought tag might be needed on occasion to keep things from getting too confusing.

Beth