How do I punctuate this type of sentence?

Hey, Jo. I asked the same question last week in the "puctuating thoughts" thread http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70062.

Anyway, this is what I found from a google search:

It's perfectly all right to treat Cindy's internal dialog as though she'd spoken it:
What do we do now? Cindy wondered.

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Unfortunately in that example, because Cindy is a name we can't be sure whether the pronoun would have been lowercase (she), but that's how I read the example in context. It's from this webpage: http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/dialogue.shtml

In your example, without the italics, I'm not sure what to do. But I've decided that whenever I use italics to express thoughts and need to use a tag, I'm going to treat is as dialogue. A thought tag, if you will.

Also, if you just wrote

Was it worth it?

You wouldn't need the "she wondered" part. I've heard you can either italicize or give tags, but to do both is redundant.

But, RLB, there could be an instance where tags are needed:

Is she crazy? he wondered.
Why does he keep looking at me like I'm crazy? she thought.
Boy, they sure are strange! little Bobby thought, watching Jack and Lisa trying to make out.

We need to agree on the rule.

Ziljon said:

But, RLB, there could be an instance where tags are needed:

Is she crazy? he wondered.
Why does he keep looking at me like I'm crazy? she thought.
Boy, they sure are strange! little Bobby thought, watching Jack and Lisa trying to make out.

We need to agree on the rule.

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Yes, if you are in that many of your characters' heads, then you do need tags. (though I don't do omniscient, so in any given scene, there will be only one character whose thoughts the reader is privvy to) Though at that point, I'm wondering if the italics wouldn't be redundant? I don't know. But I agree with the punctuation you posted above:

Was it worth it? she wondered.
It was worth it, she decided.

I'd probably write those without the italics.

I've never heard the rule of italicizing thoughts if they aren't connected to tags. It makes sense, I guess, but regardless of how you do it you must stay consistent. If you italicize thought once, I would italicize it throughout, and vice versa. (I almost said "throughout the book," but in my WIP I italicize thought in one section and don't in another as a way of showing the different personalities of my two MCs.)

Grammatically, the third example JoNightshade uses is correct:

Was it worth it? she wondered.

Thought is treated the same as external dialogue: the tags are secondary to the thought itself.

RLB said:

Yes, if you are in that many of your characters' heads, then you do need tags. (though I don't do omniscient, so in any given scene, there will be only one character whose thoughts the reader is privvy to)

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I would really caution about omniscient with alternating thoughts, unless these people can read each other's mind. I've seen this done before -- without tags! But the writer did it so well I had no problem figuring out who is who.

Still, jumping into different characters' heads at once is one of my pet peeves.

Will Lavender said:

I've never heard the rule of italicizing thoughts if they aren't connected to tags.

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I don't think I heard it presented as a hard and fast rule, more as a style choice.

And I guess it depends on the piece. If the work is third person past, an unitalicized and untagged thought would be an abrupt shift into first person present with no warning from the punctuation. (not that a good writer couldn't make it work I suppose) But if the work is already in first person present, the thoughts can flow seamlessly in and out of the narrative.