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Post by MelCorbett on Oct 28, 2015 21:11:37 GMT
So... I write paranormal and urban fantasy, and SciFi. And I was wondering, how do you all format text messages? Or how do you think text messages should be formatted in prose? Is there some convention I don't know about? I seem to remember reading the Ender series years ago in the Ender series, and seeing that Orson Scott Card used different fonts to set apart text/email/IM conversations.
I think I have a few texts in my book, but here's the problematic one.
My problematic line as I revise:
Is this formatting okay? Would you do it differently?
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Oct 29, 2015 2:09:36 GMT
For non dialogue communication, I have seen many types of formatting, from plain italics to bolding to a different font to putting it in <>. As long as you are consistent, I think whatever you do should be okay.
This is the way I usually do it, not that this is necessarily more correct.
I changed the wording slightly to match what I would have done.
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Oct 29, 2015 6:05:52 GMT
I'm lazy with things like that, so I just format text messages in italics the same as direct thoughts, telepathy and things the characters read.
How I'd probably do it:
Her phone buzzed - a text from Jeff. Couldn't even be bothered calling her back, apparently. Figure it out, Jeff's message said. Then, as she was wondering whether the phone would survive hitting the wall at high speed, it buzzed again. Due diligence research was your job, wasn’t it?
...and now apparently I know the real reason one of my characters has a phone with a cracked screen.
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Post by MelCorbett on Oct 30, 2015 1:47:08 GMT
Lol :-)
Thanks for the feedback. I'm reluctant to use a different font because I'm not sure how that will convert to ebook format, so I like the idea of italics or maybe french quotes «». Borrow from Spanish :-)
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