Writing pet peeves

Quadratic formula? In English class, was this? I don't remember that happening.

Define "excessive."

No, in math class.

Oh, that makes a lot more sense. ^_^;

I was confused by the reference to such a thing in the context of "it's"/"its". My mistake.

Also, I don't think they made us memorise that. Perhaps they should have.

An average of two or more italicized words throughout the entire work. Most works should be able to get away with one or fewer. The vast majority of the time, it should be obvious where the emphasis lies; italics should be reserved for rare occasions where normal grammar would indicate the wrong emphasis.

EDIT: Leaving out important words is another major blunder. I meant two or more words per page throughout the entire work.

edited 19th Feb '12 10:49:50 AM by jewelleddragon

Oh. You'd hate my stuff, then.

(Granted, most of the italics are actually for purposes other than emphasis, but still).

Well, if you're using it to indicate internal monologue or excerpts from something or whatever, that's entirely different.

Well, I tend to use it primarily to indicate shifts in narrative position (i.e. anything that isn't my usual third-person omniscient, like, say, a journal narration or flashback, etc.), or a character speaking a language that isn't English.

But I do use it for emphasis far more than once in my works.

...Just reread my post and I totally made that a lot more Draconian than I meant. I meant italics more than once per page, not italics more than once, period.

Of course it's an arbitrary rule either way.

edited 19th Feb '12 10:50:47 AM by jewelleddragon

Heh, I was sort of wondering about that.

I still probably overuse italics for emphasis, I admit. I have a bigger problem with large, difficult-to-parse compound sentences using hyphens and semi-colons I need to work on, though.

In defense of emphasis, it's an actual thing used by people in real life when speaking to other people, especially during arguments. It's definitely not superfluous; This has an example of how emphasis can convey new information.

It mainly grates when the emphasis is there because the thing I am saying right now is so incredibly awesome.

edited 19th Feb '12 10:55:15 AM by TripleElation

I really only use italics to indicate that a character is yelling or saying something in a hostile tone. I feel it looks better than all caps and speaking through dialogue tags. I absolutely loathe all capital letters!

You should indeed use emphasis when it's unclear, but how necessary it is can depend on context. For instance:

You could emphasize it like so:

Probably not necessary, though. The emphasis would naturally be assumed to fall on "entirely." But what if the context is different?

Now we've introduced new information. Now we're saying that the letter was false, but the phone call was true. So this emphasis is necessary to convey the meaning. We could also say:

Versus the first example, we've shifted from implying that parts of it are true and parts of it are false to implying that the whole thing is sort of true. Depending on how important the distinction is, this emphasis might or might not be necessary.

But you don't have to italicize every place in a sentence where the emphasis might fall in speech, because people already assume that the emphasis will fall there, whether you specifically say so or not.

edited 19th Feb '12 11:20:28 AM by jewelleddragon

I don't know about other people, but to be honest, if I read a sentence with no italics, I read it in a flat, no-emphasis tone. I only add emphasis in my head when reading if emphasis is actually presented, usually. Maybe that's just me being weird.

Like Flyboy you'd hate my stuff too. I use italics as a styliser for various things among them: Radio chatter, random narrative, location establishment lines, chapter titles, and a few other things.

Mm, I think I know what Dragon is talking about.

Like, if you read old-style Superhero comics and the text seems to be bolded in random places. It looks like people are shouting every other word. Don't do that in writing.

I don't think italics for structural things is what he's talking about, as far as I can tell. Since, I thought that too, but when I brought it up earlier he dismissed it as different from what he meant.

I never understood why they did that, to be honest.

I always just thought their printers were messed up...

edited 19th Feb '12 12:14:05 PM by Flyboy

Maybe not phonetically, but you probably still afford more significance to certain words, since doing so gives the sentences meaning.

Like, suppose we recontextualise your statement there. Contrast:

"Do other people derive emphasis from sentences without italics?"
"I don't know about other people, but to be honest, if I read a sentence with no italics, I read it in a flat, no-emphasis tone."

"Italics are never necessary; there are other ways to emphasise words."
"I don't know about other people, but to be honest, if I read a sentence with no italics, I read it in a flat, no-emphasis tone."

"If you or other people read a sentence without italics, you read it in a flat, no-emphasis voice."
"I don't know about other people, but to be honest, if I read a sentence with no italics, I read it in a flat, no-emphasis tone."

"If you or other people see a sentence without italics on a page, can you perceive emphasis in that?"
"I don't know about other people, but to be honest, if I read a sentence with no italics, I read it in a flat, no-emphasis tone."

Might not be the best examples, but hopefully you get the gist. Each time the meaning implicitly changes as different words become more important.

Your name is JOHN. As was previously mentioned it is your BIRTHDAY. A number of CAKES are scattered about your room. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for REALLY TERRIBLE MOVIES. You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN. You also like to play GAMES sometimes.

I'm reading John Le Carre right now and the whole book is like this:

edited 19th Feb '12 1:28:14 PM by jewelleddragon

Homestuck isn't really capitalizing words for emphasis. Sometimes it is, but usually the capitalization is to refer to SPECIFIC THINGS because that particular SPECIFIC THING will be mentioned again in various CONTEXTS, rather like how SPECIAL ITEMS are mentioned in VIDEO GAMES, because Homestuck is trying to be structured like one.

Compare Homestuck to a page of Silver age Spiderman◊:

"That's why I think you'll appreciate MY new game — especially when you see the poetry in it!"

"By the way, this is the PUNCH line!"

"Y-you mean this WASN'T a publicity stunt? That was the REAL Green Goblin?"

"With my luck, the Garden will want to SUE me for damages!"

"Look who decided to VISIT his old pals!"

"We've got a big SURPRISE for Greeny here, don't we?"

"That's right! A whole new RECREATION FACILITY — Complete with our own SPIDER MAN GAME!"

"Aw, shaddup, my Spidey is WINNIN'!"

I keep EXPECTING a pun to be there if I look HARD enough, but it's not THERE. It's just... caps. CAPS. Caps for their own SAKE. Caps. Naked. Triumphant in their defiance of "OMG LOOK HERE"-wise authorial DECENCY. Caps. CAPS. So many.

Well the PROBLEM partially is the way MARVEL decides to MAKE its COMICS — what the writers DO is they just write, and THEN the artists and INKERS will decide what to do with THE dialogue, SOMETIMES emphazising the wrong WORDS ENTIRELY inappropriately!

Don't DO that when you're writing, KIDS.

edited 19th Feb '12 1:56:02 PM by ohsointocats

DC has been known to indulge, on occasion, as well... -.-

And then if someone is writing a letter or something, the words will actually be emphasized in the text. Imagine if you got a letter or email like that.

I have to agree that random emphasis is annoying. Bold, italics, capitalization, all those methods of making specific words stand out. I try to avoid them except when necessary. Once in a while, they can be useful. Italics, of course, work very well for thoughts, letters, things like that. Bold and caps are best used for when a character shouts a particular word loudly. I've used caps for a crowd shouting something. I've also used bold text for a character who'd grown really, really tall, since I figured bold would be less irritating than caps.

All-caps are really annoying. If you want to show that a character's yelling, that's what exclamation marks are for. Though comics always used to have exclamation marks at the end of everything. I remember Marvel once tried to combat their overuse of exclamation marks by removing them from the end of speech bubbles. But they didn't put in anything else to replace them. That was . . . odd.

And actually, I just reminded myself. Technically, with ellipsis, you're supposed to put a space between each one. So, '. . .' instead of '...'. That rule doesn't seem to be followed much, though, even in professional publications.