That's an excellent question.
Don't you think?
I've heard some controversy over italics. Some people swear by their necessity. While other people tend to view with skepticism.
For me as a reader, I've always had some angst for italics. When I see italics, my brain does this thing where it takes me completely out of the world of the book. For me, italics are distracting. In my head, they are completely separate from whatever is going on in the book.
I don't italicize my characters' internal thoughts.
When I first started writing, it never crossed my mind that I ought to italicize my character's thoughts. Mostly because I disliked reading italics so much. Yet I didn't consider that it would be wrong, or different, or ground-shaking if I decided not to italicize.
I went to a writers critique group once. It was my first time. The best thing was that they were fantasy writers, paranormal writers. Speculative fiction reigned in this critique group. Aka: We all wrote weird stuff.
They said that they liked how I didn't use italics for internal monologue. They said that most people do and it seems that recently there had been a controversial break in that trend. The leader of the group was very against italics for thought process usage. Everything he said made a ton of sense to me. So I've continued to write the same way.
If you write from a deep POV level, there's no reason to use italics. You're writing from your character's head therefore, what you write is in his/her words. What is the point of italics? It's already all your character.
I will say though that there are certain times when italics could be helpful.
I sometimes use italics for the purpose of stressing a word, mostly in dialogue. If a character says a word in a weird way, or they themselves stress it, I might italicize it.
Oddball does like italics though. In his dialogue. I manage to talk him out of it. But he does get stubborn sometimes. (
He wrote a post not to long ago and italicized THREE words in a single post! *mini
heart attack* I give him free rein on the blog and he wants to italicize
everything?!)
In writing, I do like to allude to things that were done or said before. I like to be subtle, but I often question whether what I'm alluding to happened too far back for the reader to remember. For instance, if Oddball had previously thought something like this:
"You can't reason with a mad man."
I might repeat that if something similar happens later in the story. So should I italicize to signify that Oddball is thinking back to this earlier time when he couldn't reason with a mad man?
I have no idea. I don't want to. I like subtlety. But I don't want to confuse the reader either.
Also, I know some people use italics for dragons. For instance, some books have dragons who speak telepathically with their riders (which is the coolest thing ever!). I definitely understand the use of italics then. It's dialogue, but since it's not being directly spoken aloud, you can't use quotation marks.
Everyone has different uses for italics. Some people love italics. Emily from Emily of New Moon does (by L. M. Montgomery, awesome book, that). (See?! Italics for book titles. They have their place.)
What do you think? What are your italic preferences? Have you seen any unusually ways for italic usuage?
