Examples of Painting the Medium in the Discworld series.
- Terry Pratchett's Death SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS (or, in some editions, CAPS and SMALL CAPS). This applies when he appears in Good Omens as well.
- Mort and Susan, Death's apprentice and granddaughter, start speaking in capitals whenever they "do the Voice".
- Klatchians speaking in their vaguely Arabesque native language use an ornate cursive font (interspaced with ordinary letters if they have an accent!)
- Azrael the Death of Universes takes up a page to speak a single word.
- The Auditors of Reality, those cosmic-level Obstructive Bureaucrats, don't need quotation marks. This apparently represents that they don't speak, but alter the universe so they have spoken.
- Reaper Man's twin A-plots are marked out by subtly different font weights.
- Also in Reaper Man, Death's scythe is shown to be sharp enough to slice whatever's being said at the time, leaving big ol' slashes and chopping the rest of the sentence onto the next line of the page.
- In Thief of Time, Wen is shown to be affecting time with his Procrastinator by repeating the last few lines, the last sentence, or even the last few letters, as if Wen were playing scratch artist with the universe.
- Also in Thief of Time, each chapter break is marked with the tick of a clock... until the Glass Clock stops time, and the breaks are marked with a simple space as in the other books. The chapter break after the Clock stops time is marked with a ti-... and the breaks are marked with a simple space, until time resumes with an -ick. Thereafter chapter breaks are marked with tick again.
- In Witches Abroad, while describing the stillness and silence pervading a sleep-bewitched castle, the narrative itself gets rudely interrupted:There was no sound in the-"Open up there!"-no sound in the-There was a tinkle of broken glass."You've broken their window!"- not a sound in the-
- And in Small Gods, a powerful deity speaks in numbered, Biblical-style verses.
- In the hardback edition of Feet of Clay, the (speechless) golems write their words in an Hebraic-looking script. Disappointingly, this was left out of the paperbacks (except the Corgi paperback), so the golems' text just appeared in bold letters. And the ones who can speak Speak Like That All The Time.
- In Maskerade we come across a rogue "Up here?" in one of the margins. Nearer the bottom of the page, the protagonist starts to throw her voice...
- One of the thugs in The Truth, Mr. Tulip, says things like, "Shall I hit him up alongside the —ing head with the —ing oar again?" It's not until you're partway through the book that you learn he's really just saying "ing" in a very angry and aggressive way.
- Several characters are also noted for their ability to pronounce punctuation and italics.
- There's one paragraph in Going Postal which appears to be a multi-line sentence of dialogue by the main character, Moist von Lipwig, describing some of the weird things that have happened to him since he started working at the Ankh-Morpork Post office. This is followed by "is what he did not say, because it's the kind of thing you don't say to an open notebook."
- In Men at Arms, there's what seems to be Carrot's one and only venture into first-person internal monologue. It turns out to be Gaspode, using his "put words into the human's head" trick. Unsuccessfully.
- Going Postal also feature's a greengrocer who suffer's from a bad ca'se of "Greengrocer's apostrophe", as in "Red Apples's". His speech is peppered with apostrope's where they arent needed, and its missin'g them where they are. We find out in Making Money that thi's is required by grocer's guild rule's.
- Carrot can pronounce "d*mn", said to be "a difficult linguistic feat".
- In several books, when a character mentions something Important, it is written with the First Letter in each word Capitalized. Other characters note that they can Hear the Capital Letters.
- In Mort, a gang of muggers are very surprised when their victim, the title character, walks backwards through a wall as if it were insubstantial. The response:'Well, —— me,' he said. 'A ——ing wizard. I hate ——ing wizards!''You shouldn't —— them, then,' muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.
- In Night Watch Discworld, the bell that rings silences is set tolling out of control, making everyone's dialog intersperse with blanks until it's fixed.
- In Moving Pictures, when film-reality intrudes on Disc-reality and the scene goes soundless, the only things Victor and Ginger can express to one another is "!" and "?". Twoflower in The Colour of Magic spoke in the same way when he wasn't using his translation dictionary.
- One of the earlier books had an elderly wizard who could pronounce brackets (when he used them, which was often).
- Edward D'eath is a very dangerous person, as illustrated by his ability to "think in italics".
- Both Pyramids and Good Omens feature old characters (mummies who have been brought back to life and a 17th-century witch, respectively) who talk exclusively in "Old English," and therefore say things like, "Thys ys spookye."
- An early example from Equal Rites:Esk gazed down defiantly. Granny glared up sternly. Their wills clanged like cymbals and the air between them thickened. But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph.
- Referenced in Hogfather, when the narrative states that it'd be hard to properly describe how Death emerges from a small opening without folding the page.
