I’m currently reading People We Meet on Vacation, and the texting being included in bold within the sentence is an interesting choice. It makes it easy to read, but for some reason it doesn’t quite feel like texting to me.
I remember BBC’s Sherlock being a bit revolutionary for how they depicted texting on screen, and was just curious if anyone has come across a style in book form that they felt was particularly effective?
by HarrisonRyeGraham
6 Comments
If I wrote a book, I think
I would go back in time far enough to skip texting.
With it being the main way many of us communicate, I don’t think I would do anything other than an indent to show it was written like anything written. A letter, note, email.
As an ebook reader, clever formatting is one of those oh-that’s-nice but unfortunately annoying to me things. I read with the font sized pretty large so my eyes can be lazy, which means any special formatting throws that ✣ arrow that disrupts my reading and page turning. I’d much rather it be slapped in something simple like italic or bold text that’s more accessible to the widest group of readers.
Mostly by pretending it doesn’t exist.
A character acknowledging they got a text to a second character in the scene is fine, but if it’s a text conversation, I’d much rather just have it be dialogue.
Not exactly your question but I like the way the Footnoter phone is done in Thursday Next. It just adds a footnote to the bottom of the pages. I kind of like that idea for texting if the characters are talking/doing something face to face but texting at the same time. Kind of let’s you see the split focus of what that can be like.
i like when the texting appears in a separate block on the page. visually it immediately tells your brain “this is a message”
I reference it, but I don’t quote it or do anything that would require special formatting of the text.
This is a personal preference, not some kind of rule so don’t jump down my throat if you do it this way I’m not judging you, but I fucking HATE when people clutter up the text with weird formatting to make it so you “see” the text messages. It’s an outgrowth of my fucking loathing for “italics used for the characters first person thoughts”.
I just think they all look hideous. Absolutely ugly on the page.