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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46412
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46412
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Was it a short lived trend to write novels this way?

I don't believe so. I've been reading novels for over fifty years, I have several hundred of them on my home bookshelves. I would have noticed a trend like that if it appeared since about 1965.

As for your title question: Yes, but not so much the items you quote. Those kinds of stylistic things are a product of a lack of space for dialogue in a visual medium, so it is a kind of shorthand for what, in a novel, would be written out in prose.

Dashes indicate interruptions or pauses. All Caps indicate emphasis that can be explained in prose (which the comic has no real room for). Colons take the place of "said" or "asked" or other such words.

Using "who" or "what" as nouns may occur, in normal speech they may be: "The _who_ now?"

And obviously there is the Band "The Who", which I imagine was a joke on this very phenomenon. Or the old skit about "Who's on First". But I see no trend toward that (and I don't read comic books, so I don't know how often it is done there).

As for your second item, using Italics to indicate thought, that has _always_ been a common convention. The thoughts of the POV character are frequently presented in their own paragraph in italics; this is similar to dialogue but without the quotes.

> "I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Mary," Angela said.
> 
> _Richard better be more careful, that idiot is going to ruin everything._
> 
> Mary winced, then shook her head. "You're probably right, I'm just paranoid."

Original score: 1