Thoughts in Italics

Pretty much what the title says. I've written a three-book story, during which the thoughts of the characters are displayed in italics. I just realized that I cannot find other stories off the top of my head where this is done, and I'm really freaking out right now. Am I...wrong? Will I have to somehow redo this whole thing? Internal dialogue is a pretty big part of the story, so I'm really worried.

I saw it in Dune, I think in a few chapter books I read when I was little... Usually thoughts in italics are in books with POV in third person limited or omniscient. Maybe you were reading books in different PO Vs. I say don't worry about it.

Thanks for the reply. There are four protagonist, each of whom has a first-person perspective. It switches to third person at times when dealing with events/people not related to the protagonists. But I use italic-thoughts with at all times. I'm just worried that it would stand in the way of it being published

edited 16th Oct '15 6:36:22 PM by Swordofknowledge

It's pretty standard.

I can't think of the names of the books off-hand but I've seen numerous occasions where the thoughts are italicised and I generally view any unquoted italic sentences as the thoughts of the POV character.

"If it's in quotes and there's only one or two italicised words, I take it as emphasis."

I note a lot of people use that convention in the CDT threads here, as well.

My question is, what do you use for emphasis if thoughts are already done in italics?

Convention is that you switch to standard text:

I should have known that this was a really bad move.

I can't remember any works I've read where it wasn't done this way, but I guess it might be more common in Swedish books/translations maybe?

Don't worry, this is common. An optional convention, I guess.

Pretty much every book I've read does this.

It is also common in Spanish literature. For example, in the Kadingir series, Telepathy is used extensively by many characters, and it is always depicted as standard dialogue in Italics. Inner thoughts, on the other hand, are simple text in Italics with no special marks.