Should capitalization be used for emphasis for a character's tone?
Capitalization in a text has been something heavily debated in the writing community due to its nature as being preference based, and finding a hard set answer is fairly difficult. However, should capitalization be used for emphasis as part of a character's tone?
Assume a character is based purely around a definite, harsh and painful to listen to voice, in a situation where simple text would seem too mundane. Take these examples:
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"
Versus
The androgynous voice grew harsh, as if scraping his mind. "Do you understand what you've done?"
If the character solely speaks in a tone that is harsh, would it be viable to use capitalization as emphasis or should you resort to describing it beforehand and using normal text?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26340. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
All caps has come to mean shouting. You can have a voice which is harsh but not loud. So no, I wouldn't use all caps to mean something which is difficult to listen to. Describe it as "harsh" and let your readers imagine what that sounds like.
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Neither of the above. You can't act a scene in prose. Nor can you describe your way into a reaction. What you have to do to get the reader to have a reaction to events it to set them up properly so that they have the reaction you are looking for when the plain words are delivered.
If you want "Do you understand what you have done" to fall with great portent and gravitas upon the reader's mind, then you need to have spent the previous couple of pages setting things up so that we know exactly who the players are and exactly what the tension is between them, and exactly what the stakes are so that when the words, "Do you understand what you have done" are uttered, we only need to hear them to know how they are delivered and how the person they are spoken to receives them.
In literature, we have no actors, no sets, not lights, no music, no sound effects. We only have words. And the way we create effects with words is through carefully constructing the scene so that the moment of payoff is triggered by a few simple words. Because it must always be triggered, never created by a crescendo of light and sound, because we don't have these things. The effect is all in the setup.
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