In between unspeakable tragedy and the busy-ness and joy of the holidays, my book release kind of took a back seat, but after Christmas I was delighted to sign off on the version that will become the paperback edition in a few weeks. (Can't wait that long? Check out the Kindle version now.) In the process I've learned a bit more about electronic publishing - enough to realize that I'm wandering in a dense wilderness without a map, metaphorically speaking.
In the fall of 1986, I was a freshman in college, and my first term paper was due. Daunted by the thought of attempting the typewriter, I made an emergency purchase of my very first computer (a Mac 512KE, signed by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, but that's another story), and from then on I've composed my writing almost entirely in digital media. In high school, my essays were submitted in blue-black cursive on white lined paper; in college, they were produced on a dot matrix printer that, while painfully slow by modern standards, nevertheless allowed the use of "advanced" features such as italics.
Ah, italics. (Not to be confused with oblique type - again, another story.) The darling of aspiring and over-enthusiastic writers everywhere, italics are used for a whole host of purposes - for emphasis, to indicate foreign-language words, for titles of book-length materials and plays, and to indicate conventions unique to a specific piece of literature. For example, I use italics to indicate interior (non-spoken) dialog, either telepathic between characters, in which case I include quotation marks, or internal prayer/communion with the divine, in which case I leave off the quotation marks.
In the fall of 1986, I was a freshman in college, and my first term paper was due. Daunted by the thought of attempting the typewriter, I made an emergency purchase of my very first computer (a Mac 512KE, signed by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, but that's another story), and from then on I've composed my writing almost entirely in digital media. In high school, my essays were submitted in blue-black cursive on white lined paper; in college, they were produced on a dot matrix printer that, while painfully slow by modern standards, nevertheless allowed the use of "advanced" features such as italics.
Ah, italics. (Not to be confused with oblique type - again, another story.) The darling of aspiring and over-enthusiastic writers everywhere, italics are used for a whole host of purposes - for emphasis, to indicate foreign-language words, for titles of book-length materials and plays, and to indicate conventions unique to a specific piece of literature. For example, I use italics to indicate interior (non-spoken) dialog, either telepathic between characters, in which case I include quotation marks, or internal prayer/communion with the divine, in which case I leave off the quotation marks.
The trouble with italics is that, apart from the title conventions mentioned above, there's no hard-and-fast rule about when to use them and when not. Several writers and readers I know despise italics, finding them irritating, self-important, and/or confusing. Others love them, and key off the visual text to further or deepen the meaning and/or impact of a particular word or clause. Here's my trouble with italics - they can disappear from one electronic format to another, i.e. going from Word to Kindle. Anyone who is planning on electronically publishing should be aware of this issue and make sure that you check and double-check the formatting.
More generally, if you're using italics in your writing, be sure to be consistent. Don't start and stop. Some readers won't notice, but others who are more visual (I'm one of those) certainly will, and will find it jarring to have to figure out if the change from italicized text to plain text has meaning, or if it's simply a formatting glitch.
The same is true for indents. Almost always these days, in either electronic or traditional books, a new paragraph is indicated by a standard-sized indent. In manuscripts in the days of the typewriter, this indent was achieved by pressing the Tab key, but nowadays word processing software has gotten so clever that it can indent automatically. Tabs are clunky and I don't recommend using them, but again, be sure to double check that those nice half-inch indents come through when you're moving from Word to e-format.
I've learned a lot in the past couple of weeks, and hopefully my observations
RSS Feed