I'm not cutting ALL italics, but Sail made some good calls re: overitalicsing.

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Excellent feedback, sugar.

Thanks! ::wipes brow:: I was afraid you might think I was being too much of a hardass and wouldn't send me anymore to read. And that would have been a bad thing.

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Erin, I need mine - I use them a lot in Haunted Ballads, to show where the voice being used is an excerpt from a manuscript or song snippet, or when one of the characters is hearing something supernatural.

If I had to underline all those, I'd run screaming; I'd find it unreadable.

But yep, if you're italicising as emphasis, that's a whole nother ball of wax.

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Oh, no, Sail. I don't want "Ohmigod, it was all great! Perfect! You are a goddess!"

Well, yeah, that's what I'd like, but not what I need, ya know?

Underlining? That what you do to book titles on a works cited page. Pffftt.

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But yep, if you're italicising as emphasis, that's a whole nother ball of wax.

Yes. I use itals a lot online, because I think of posts as conversation.

In formal writing, italics-for-emphasis feel like another violation of the show-don't-tell rule. They're telling the reader where the word emphasis should be, when truly, word choice and arrangement are (I think) the better way to convey emphasis.

(Or maybe that's just me, but I don't think so.)

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Heh. Cindy, I agree, but once in a while, I end up with a specific character who has a specific pattern of speech, and sometimes, the itals work. There was general agreement - especially from my editor, thank goodness - that the quirky emphasised speech was part of what made Charlotte Leight-Arnold so damned vivid.

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Hmm non-fiction question. You are listing the following in a single paragraph : a book title, a journal title and an organization name. This is followed by an extended quote. (This is for blurbs. I'm giving evidence that the person I'm about to quote is an expert, then quoting them saying my book is the cat's pajamas - only not in those words thank dog.)

Extended quote needs to be italicized, yes?

So do I use underlines for organization, book and journal titles?

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Heh. Cindy, I agree, but once in a while, I end up with a specific character who has a specific pattern of speech, and sometimes, the itals work. There was general agreement - especially from my editor, thank goodness - that the quirky emphasised speech was part of what made Charlotte Leight-Arnold so damned vivid.

That's true. I didn't mean that as a hard and fast rule, just a rule of thumb.

I'm extra conscious of it lately, because I find myself breaking it all the time, thanks to poor habits I've developed on the internet.

I feel less committed to the rule of thumb in dialogue, than in the narrative. I was mostly thinking of the "for-emphasis" italics in narrative.

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With me, I just have trouble reading long italics sections -- the words look too different for me to sight-read, or something. When I'm reading something that has more than a sentence or so at a time in italics, I'll frequently just give up rather than trying to wade through it. (If something in the book has interested me already, I'll work through it, but it's a pain. There was some book I picked up that had come highly recommended, but it started with an entire chapter in italics, and I just could get far enough into it to figure out whether I liked it or not.)

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delurk

There was some book I picked up that had come highly recommended, but it started with an entire chapter in italics, and I just could get far enough into it to figure out whether I liked it or not.)

Was it Empire Falls? I almost didn't get past that first chapter either. I did eventually find it worthwhile, but entire chapters in italics are HARD to read. I do fine with the occasional paragraph.

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