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Let's talk about word emphasis. And sundry.
G. TKP: I shaved my arm-pits.
TKMom: Cool. Let me see.
TKP: Look. (hooks index in t-shirt sleeve to reveal self.)
TKMom: They're so sparkly!
R. Got 4th rejection letter. Am waiting to get rejected to 3 more grad schools. Go me.
A. Writing month! It's a time to discuss how we write, why we write, what we write. DISCUSSION, it squeezes me up out of defjection from rejection (marvel at my rhyme) like a tight hug or one of those stress things, the ones you squeeze and have to keep grabbing hand over fist lest they slip from your hands entirely. It's about being constructive, and possibly positive, and gazing at our navels with shining, dewy eyes and wondering words that tumble from our mazed-parted lips in the form of, "I'm beautiful; I'm really beautiful!"
V. Er, the point of this post...
I've seen people use
bold font
*astrisks*
/slashes/
\backslashes\
-dashes-
_these thingies_
CAPSLOCK
"quotes"
'single quotes'
~are these things called tildas?~
=equals signs--no, really!=
underlined text
and much more in order to:
-emphasize a word or phrase
-signify a thought taking place in a character's head
-denote a flashback
-emphasize a word occuring within a sentence/phrase/whatever that's already italicized because it's a flashback or a thought
Me, I only ever use italics for these things inside a fic (what I do in my posts and comments is a completely different story to me). When I want to emphasize something occuring already inside an italicized phrase, I un-italicize the word I want to emphasize, as demonstrated above. I only use italics for these purposes for several reasons:
-this is the way I see it done in published fiction.
-uniformity, which is somewhat connected to the next to ideas, so I won't go into it that much. In short, the reader doesn't have to guess why I emphasized some words in one way and other words in another way, or try to decipher whether the different ways of emphasis connotate different levels of importance.
-if I need another tool besides italics to convey my meaning, my meaning is probably convoluted, and could stand simplification until I only need italics in order to make my point.
(e.g., in Down There In The Reeperbahn I really wanted the dialogue bits to occur with as little narrative background as possible, and thus I had a problem of signifying who was saying what lines. I ended up using italics to signify Dru's voice. If it was still unclear who was speaking, there was a problem with my concept, my dialogue, and my presentation, and those are things that can't be fixed by resorting to using other "signifiers" to denote other people talking.)
-how they look. Italics are subtle and don't call a lot of attention to themselves. For me, all those other things do. Bold, CAPSLOCK, and underline have a tendency to draw the eye. (When skimming my flist, I almost always read the CAPSLOCKED text, the links, and the cut title first, because the colors and size call attention to themselves. It's lead to me missing important information contained in the regular text.)
Asteriks, slashes, dashes, et al, not only call attention, but add something to the text that is not meant to be read. This bothers me a lot. I feel that everything in most kinds of fiction should be a part of the text. Asterisks used to emphasize a word are not things that we read, but visual clues that the words they enclose are important.
I'd like to note that I am a big fan of making text a visual experience. Poetry, notably through e e cummings and the like, uses the shape of words and the space on the page as part and parcel to the piece itself. Prose is a different thing, but I don't quite believe it when people say this is the difference. Reading is looking at marks on a page, whether prose or poetry, whether the text transports you to a new world or not.
As such, I love prose that experiments/does new things with space and those marks on said page. The first time I saw it done in prose was Toni Morrison's Beloved, in which she eliminated spaces between some words in order to produce confusionurgencypanic. I've seen some fic-authors use that same technique to extraordinary effect. And when it comes to this kind of experimentation, I feel there is no right and wrong. Pynchon uses mathematical equations in the middle of text, and even though I for the most part don't understand it, I fangirl the effort.
But when some fic-authors use *asterisks* merely to emphasize a word, it doesn't appear to me to be trying something new with space or text-shape or anything like that. It appears to me to be just another way to emphasize a word, and in a way I find distracting and detrimental to the look of the text as a whole. Bold or CAPSLOCK could be used very purposely to draw the eye--to trick the reader into reading in a non-linear fashion, which could, if the author is very clever, produce an effect the reader would not otherwise experience. But when some fic-authors use Bold or CAPSLOCK , again, they seem to be doing so only for word-emphasis, and again, in a way I find distracting and detrimental.
That said, there are uses for some of these styles other than word emphasis. Some are:
-underlining book titles.
-boldfacing titles of segments of the text (part one, part two, so on.)
-boldfacing a sign, or business card, etc. Some books seem to want to physically show you the business card or sign. The block of text saying what's on the card is usually indented and formatted to look like a sign. I usually stay away from this use; it falls into the category of "if I can't show this through regular text, there's something wrong with my writing, not my visual presentation." But, I've seen some authors do it, so there, exception to the "way it's done in published books" rule of mine.
-CAPSLOCKING a disembodied or really powerful voice. For instance, JKR probably wore out her capslock button on Book 5. I stay away from this use also, for the same reasons as above.
-"quoted" or 'single-quoted' words obviously have their place in text, but they shouldn't be used as italics are, imo. I'm told there's an episode of "Freinds" and Ross air-quoting "thanks" that could probably explain the difference.
Anyway, I've seen excellent authors I admire use many of these styles, especially boldface, CAPSLOCK, and *astrisks*. No matter who's writing it, it throws me out of the text. But that's me, my opinion, my way of writing, and my way of reading. What're your thoughts on the matter? How do you use these tools, if you use them? What do you think when you see them in text?
Y. "Cheekbones so unreal they must be sparkled with god-dust"...The lovechild of Kiera Knightly and James Marsters could split atoms with his cheekbones.
!. Mmm. Brains.
TKMom: Cool. Let me see.
TKP: Look. (hooks index in t-shirt sleeve to reveal self.)
TKMom: They're so sparkly!
R. Got 4th rejection letter. Am waiting to get rejected to 3 more grad schools. Go me.
A. Writing month! It's a time to discuss how we write, why we write, what we write. DISCUSSION, it squeezes me up out of defjection from rejection (marvel at my rhyme) like a tight hug or one of those stress things, the ones you squeeze and have to keep grabbing hand over fist lest they slip from your hands entirely. It's about being constructive, and possibly positive, and gazing at our navels with shining, dewy eyes and wondering words that tumble from our mazed-parted lips in the form of, "I'm beautiful; I'm really beautiful!"
V. Er, the point of this post...
I've seen people use
bold font
*astrisks*
/slashes/
\backslashes\
-dashes-
_these thingies_
CAPSLOCK
"quotes"
'single quotes'
~are these things called tildas?~
=equals signs--no, really!=
underlined text
and much more in order to:
-emphasize a word or phrase
-signify a thought taking place in a character's head
-denote a flashback
-emphasize a word occuring within a sentence/phrase/whatever that's already italicized because it's a flashback or a thought
Me, I only ever use italics for these things inside a fic (what I do in my posts and comments is a completely different story to me). When I want to emphasize something occuring already inside an italicized phrase, I un-italicize the word I want to emphasize, as demonstrated above. I only use italics for these purposes for several reasons:
-this is the way I see it done in published fiction.
-uniformity, which is somewhat connected to the next to ideas, so I won't go into it that much. In short, the reader doesn't have to guess why I emphasized some words in one way and other words in another way, or try to decipher whether the different ways of emphasis connotate different levels of importance.
-if I need another tool besides italics to convey my meaning, my meaning is probably convoluted, and could stand simplification until I only need italics in order to make my point.
(e.g., in Down There In The Reeperbahn I really wanted the dialogue bits to occur with as little narrative background as possible, and thus I had a problem of signifying who was saying what lines. I ended up using italics to signify Dru's voice. If it was still unclear who was speaking, there was a problem with my concept, my dialogue, and my presentation, and those are things that can't be fixed by resorting to using other "signifiers" to denote other people talking.)
-how they look. Italics are subtle and don't call a lot of attention to themselves. For me, all those other things do. Bold, CAPSLOCK, and underline have a tendency to draw the eye. (When skimming my flist, I almost always read the CAPSLOCKED text, the links, and the cut title first, because the colors and size call attention to themselves. It's lead to me missing important information contained in the regular text.)
Asteriks, slashes, dashes, et al, not only call attention, but add something to the text that is not meant to be read. This bothers me a lot. I feel that everything in most kinds of fiction should be a part of the text. Asterisks used to emphasize a word are not things that we read, but visual clues that the words they enclose are important.
I'd like to note that I am a big fan of making text a visual experience. Poetry, notably through e e cummings and the like, uses the shape of words and the space on the page as part and parcel to the piece itself. Prose is a different thing, but I don't quite believe it when people say this is the difference. Reading is looking at marks on a page, whether prose or poetry, whether the text transports you to a new world or not.
As such, I love prose that experiments/does new things with space and those marks on said page. The first time I saw it done in prose was Toni Morrison's Beloved, in which she eliminated spaces between some words in order to produce confusionurgencypanic. I've seen some fic-authors use that same technique to extraordinary effect. And when it comes to this kind of experimentation, I feel there is no right and wrong. Pynchon uses mathematical equations in the middle of text, and even though I for the most part don't understand it, I fangirl the effort.
But when some fic-authors use *asterisks* merely to emphasize a word, it doesn't appear to me to be trying something new with space or text-shape or anything like that. It appears to me to be just another way to emphasize a word, and in a way I find distracting and detrimental to the look of the text as a whole. Bold or CAPSLOCK could be used very purposely to draw the eye--to trick the reader into reading in a non-linear fashion, which could, if the author is very clever, produce an effect the reader would not otherwise experience. But when some fic-authors use Bold or CAPSLOCK , again, they seem to be doing so only for word-emphasis, and again, in a way I find distracting and detrimental.
That said, there are uses for some of these styles other than word emphasis. Some are:
-underlining book titles.
-boldfacing titles of segments of the text (part one, part two, so on.)
-boldfacing a sign, or business card, etc. Some books seem to want to physically show you the business card or sign. The block of text saying what's on the card is usually indented and formatted to look like a sign. I usually stay away from this use; it falls into the category of "if I can't show this through regular text, there's something wrong with my writing, not my visual presentation." But, I've seen some authors do it, so there, exception to the "way it's done in published books" rule of mine.
-CAPSLOCKING a disembodied or really powerful voice. For instance, JKR probably wore out her capslock button on Book 5. I stay away from this use also, for the same reasons as above.
-"quoted" or 'single-quoted' words obviously have their place in text, but they shouldn't be used as italics are, imo. I'm told there's an episode of "Freinds" and Ross air-quoting "thanks" that could probably explain the difference.
Anyway, I've seen excellent authors I admire use many of these styles, especially boldface, CAPSLOCK, and *astrisks*. No matter who's writing it, it throws me out of the text. But that's me, my opinion, my way of writing, and my way of reading. What're your thoughts on the matter? How do you use these tools, if you use them? What do you think when you see them in text?
Y. "Cheekbones so unreal they must be sparkled with god-dust"...The lovechild of Kiera Knightly and James Marsters could split atoms with his cheekbones.
!. Mmm. Brains.
no subject
Well, imo, they're not abuses, and you don't need an excuse. This post just dilineate what I prefer to see and why I prefer to see it. However, if you yourself think there's a problem with *this*, then perhaps you do need to give it a little thought. /repetitive disclaiming
which I do because I tend to write in the third person limited POV and do have to delineate when it is an actual internally "verbalized" thought
This is an interesting distinction. My problem with some italicized thought in the past has been I read it and think, that thought wouldn't be coherent--wouldn't be internally verbalized--in such an such scenario. That thought there, for instance. When I read it happening I don't really think it words as complicated as "coherent" or "internally verbalized"; it's just the flash of an idea. So anyway, my point is, I try to keep internally verbalized thought to an absolute minimum, because I think most of us only rarely think in complete sentences or even words. But, if one does hold off on doing that too often, using it here and there could prove very effective, I bet.
I have issues with em dashes and the abuse there of. Just ask my beta amybnnyc. Heh. At least I've read the Chicago Manual of style and know the difference between a dash, an en dash and an em dash.
It's so funny people keep mentioning dashes, because I was going to do a whole separate post about dashes and punctuation. I have lots of trouble with them too--I use them too often. And I know the difference between en and em and think I know when to use which, but I think I'm going to throw it out there so we can all discuss how we do it or think it should be done. I'm like this discussion slut.
But now, I feel like I'm just listing off my own behaviors rather than contributing to this discussion in a meaningful way.
No! I felt like this was meaningful. The point, actually, was for me to spout off my own thoughts and for us to then spout off thoughts at eachother. I'm not trying to say what's right or wrong or what should or shouldn't be done. More disclaiming!
I think it's obvious that people who don't put a space between speakers in dialogue are trying to make me lose my mind.
Heh. Me too. I think space and how it is used is a very important concept in fiction, both online and off. It's interesting what you say about there being a lot of space in your fics, about rhythm, about hearing it like poetry. To me your fics are very snappy, very clean, very...I don't know how to say this other than pow! pow! pow!--not at all like I'm being shot, but like I'm being fed brief images--but not images, not pictures, but brief moments in time, or brief insights, brief but as powerful and complete as an image is. Anyway, lots of space works for a fic like that. A fic that weaves in and out around and about knitting everything into itself and spooling out of itself should be spaced differently. Both are beautiful forms, btw, but they require different approaches.