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Q&A Direct thoughts

The most commonly given advice for using direct thoughts seems to be to format them in italics. I am not really satisfied with that, however. I haven't seen this used anywhere (granted, I do not re...

2 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Gwen Ives‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:14:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17141
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Gwen Ives‭ · 2019-12-08T04:14:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
The most commonly given advice for using direct thoughts seems to be to format them in italics. I am not really satisfied with that, however. I haven't seen this used anywhere (granted, I do not read contemporary fiction) and it feels strange to use italics for two purposes (the second one being putting stress on a word ). Even on stack exchange the italics are frowned upon in several answers.

My preference would be to just leave them unformatted, inserted into a paragraph of indirect thoughts/feelings of the same character. My question is, would this confuse you? eg. in the below (the last sentence is the direct thought of the heroine):

> It wasn't his look that unsettled her, however. It was the realization that her anger had vanished, and that what was slowly taking over its place within her mind was fear. What have I done?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-05-10T06:41:30Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 3