History PaintingTheMedium / Literature

* [[Creator/IainBanks Iain (M.) Banks]] ''loves'' these. In ''Complicity'', for example, one narrator's chapters are written in first person, while the other's are told in second person. Most infamously, ''Feersum Endjinn'' has about a third of the text written in FunetikAksent. One of the characters (Bascule) is keeping a journal, but some kind of brain dysfunction makes him spell phonetically. It was {{woolseyi|sm}}zed as containing absolutely JustForFun/{{egregious}} amounts of orthographic and spelling errors in the Polish version.

* In Joan Hess's ''Claire Malloy'' mysteries, Claire's daughter speaks in Capital Letters when she's being overdramatic. Lampshaded in the narrative by Claire herself.

* Marjorie B. Kellogg's ''Dragon Quartet'' books use different fonts for each of the four dragons (at least in the first three books).

* ''The Interior Life'' by Katherine Blake postulates an unexplained mental connection between an ordinary woman in our world and a mage in a fantasy universe; each one ends up advising the other on her problems. A fairly subtle font change is used to distinguish between the two points of view. (Out of print, but highly recommended if you can find it in a used bookstore.)

* Whenever the [[CharacterTitle title character]] starts really losing it in ''Jackrabbit Messiah'' by Geoph Essex, the [[HelpfulHallucination voice he usually hears]] starts getting printed in smaller and smaller (and fainter) text. When he's totally lost his mind (leading up to TheClimax), the dialogue from the [[HearingVoices less helpful voices in his head]] is printed in text that gradually fades in and out (in shades of gray) from the beginning to the end of each paragraph. It's described in the narration as a kind of schizophrenic "Doppler" effect, and the medium painting does a pretty effective job of demonstrating it.

** In his later efforts (''Lisey's Story, Franchise/TheDarkTower'' volumes 4-7), King experiments frequently with changing fonts and typefaces.

* In the Boris Akunin novel ''Leviathan'', text in chapters written from the perspective of a Japanese is rotated ninety degrees. It doesn't really look like Japanese vertical writing, but it does look "exotic".

* ''Living in Times of Dragons'' makes extensive use of this throughout the self-published novel. Dragons are psychic beings that speak '''''In Bold Italics with no apostrophes''''' while unicorns, also using psychic speak, ''Only speak in italics without apostrophes''. Later, when the protagonist learns to communicate with some dragons with his mind he also speaks in italics, but with apostrophes to show he's not really psychic. Similarly, each section of the novel starts with quotes from a real life person and a fictional character called Erasmus Grünwald. The real life quote is rendered in a hand-written font, while the Grünwald's is written in a more Germanic font, denoting his German origins.

** A similar thing happens in ''Ensel and Grete''. Whenever the [[AuthorAvatar Author of the book]] disrupts the flow of the story to digress and talk about what he feels like, the font changes. At some place several pages of the word Brummli are written to terrorize the reader.

* In the book ''The Name of this Book Is Secret'' by Pseudonymous Bosch, the entire first chapter has been replaced by strings of Xs (because it's a secret).

* On the cover and spine of Stephen Manes' ''The Obnoxious Jerks'' the title and author are printed crookedly, to suggest that the Obnoxious Jerks are a little unconventional.

* The young adult comic fantasy ''Rogues To Riches'' includes a scene where two thieves talk their way out of jail by convincing their guard that he's just a mook in a story, and will probably die if he tries to stop them, as they're the heroes. However, if he foolishly lets them go, he'll be promoted to comic relief instead, and might just rate an appearance at the end of the book. Sure enough, the very last page shows the stupid guard sitting in the thieves' former prison cell, wondering if he'll appear at the end.
* In the aftermath of [[spoiler:the rape]] in ''Self'', the text is split into two columns per page, presumably to be read at the same time. Sometimes one or both of the columns feature large amounts of blank space.

* In ''Still Life With Woodpecker'' the author alternates between writing a story and writing about himself writing the story. In the final chapter his typewriter breaks down and he is forced to finish in longhand.

* ''The Taking of Room 114: a Hostage Drama in Poems'' by Mel Glenn is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, and has some great uses of typography and white spaces.

* In the ''Turing Hopper'' series by Donna Andrews, different typefaces are used for third-person narration vs. Turing's first-person commentary.

* In some editions of Daniel Handler's book ''Watch Your Mouth'', [[color:brown:the second half of the story is printed in burgundy.]]

** The cover of ''Bank Shot'' has the title printed at an angle so that it roughly resembles the corner of a pool table, with several tiny people in it scrambling to escape the giant 8-ball overhead.
** At the end of ''The Spy in the Ointment'' Eugene and Angela are picketing outside the UN. The final page says "BAN THE BOMB" in large block letters, to represent their picket signs.

* In ''What My Mother Doesn't Know'' by Sonja Sonnes, a 15-year-old girl tells her story in verse, though it progresses like a normal novel. The poetry experiments with several textual plays like e.e. cumming's style.

* Creator/DJMacHale's ''Literature/{{Pendragon}}'' series uses different fonts to indicate whether the reader is reading the journals Bobby is sending to his friend Mark, or whether he's reading the narrative of Mark's life on Second Earth.

* ''Literature/BrownGirlInTheRing'': Italics are used for various things, such as:
** Characters' thoughts:
---> The runner moved off quickly, not even looking around for more customers. ''Coward'', Ti-Jeanne thought to herself.
** Book titles:
---> he'd dug through his book stacks and come up with an encyclopedia of medical symptoms, two gardening books, and the real find: ''Caribbean Wild Plants and Their Uses''.

** And chapter nineteen is always weird or missing, like the nineteenth floor of the school.

* According to Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}, when ''Literature/TheHobbit'' was published Tolkien wished for "Thrór's map to be tipped in (that is, glued in after the book has been bound) at first mention in the text, and with the moon-letters (Anglo-Saxon runes) on the reverse so they could be seen when held up to the light." This turned out to be prohibitively expensive and was left undone. The 'moon letter' version of the map has since been created in the 2004 deluxe edition.

* The cover of Donald E. Westlake's ''Bank Shot'' has the title printed at an angle so that it roughly resembles the corner of a pool table, with several tiny people in it scrambling to escape the giant 8-ball overhead.

* ''Literature/TheBartimaeusTrilogy'' has the eponymous character's self-narrated chapters anecdoted with footnotes that digress from the current situation in some manner. Later, the reason given that these only appear in his chapters is due to him having a multi-tracked mind, in that he can hold several lines of thought simultaneously. As he says, the best he can do to simulate the effect for us is footnotes.

* Chuck Palahniuk's ''Literature/{{Survivor}}'' numbers chapters backwards as a countdown [[spoiler:to the crash of the plane in which the narrator is squatting, telling the black box the story of his life, expecting a miracle, or not]].

* This is the reason why Danish philosopher Creator/SorenKierkegaard wrote using multiple {{pen name}}s. He used those pseudonyms to explore viewpoints that are not necessarily his own, and thus he wanted the readers to look beyond the writings to truly understand them. For example, in his work ''Either/Or'', the reader is not supposed to agree with either the aesthetic or ethical viewpoints, but recognise that they are limited and point to a higher, third sphere (considered to be the religious viewpoint).