This is a great question because the choice to use italics for characters’ thoughts might have more implications in a short story than in a novel.
What do italics do?
Italics are a stylistic tool used to set a word, phrase, or passage apart from the text to help the reader better understand your message and meaning. Their use is fabulously versatile. If you flip through one of those textbook-style short story anthologies, you’ll see them used for:*
- Titles. Titles of school classes, brands, songs, TV shows, films, newspapers, magazines, books, etc. It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890. from “The Red-Headed League” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Focal words. “I mean, that’s all.” from “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin.
- Words used as words. She did not say pee in front of people older than herself. from “Death by Landscape” by Margaret Atwood.
- Sounds . He’s firing into the floor—pow, pow, pow—his shotgun like a pogo stick […] from “One of Star Wars, One of Doom” by Lee K. Abbott.
- Quoted text. She’d seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED—Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone number. from “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver.
- Spoken poetry (including song lyrics). First from a distance and then nearer, nearer, as if borne on the wind, came the pure accents of Sweeney’s nurse again: “’Lady Jingly! Lady Jingly!’” she said, ”’sitting where the pumpkins blow, will you come and be my wife? . . .’” from “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever.
- Telepathic or imagined dialogue. Strive as he might to be transported, he heard his mind take notes upon the scene: This is what they call passion. I am experiencing it. from “Lost in the Funhouse” by John Barth.
- Dialect or accent.** “He quit me,” Nancy said. “Done gone to Memphis, I reckon. Dodging them city po-lice for a while, I reckon.” from “That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner.
- Non-English words.** She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and a hauteur which subsequently made her feel very foolish. from “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather.
* For a more thorough examination of ALL the uses for italics, check out The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction by Amy J. Schneider.
** These last two are less common in modern texts.
Curiously, you will see very few short stories where the internal dialogue of the character is in italics. But why?
Context
If your text makes use of even two of the above uses for italics, you risk confusing the reader by italicizing internal dialogue. If your reader has to think about why the italics are being used each time they encounter them, they’re no longer immersed in the story (and we don’t want that).
Frequency
In the same vein, short stories are short. Even if you only use italics for internal dialogue, but there are a number of instances across the text, the italics no longer stand out. However, if there are only one or two instances of internal dialogue in the piece, it might be meaningful to italicize them.
Redundancy
Short story readers are clever. Part of the reason they like short stories is because what isn’t said is just as important as what is. So, you want to get them the information they need but leave them some conclusions to draw on their own. Let’s take a quick boo at the common ways we express characters’ thoughts:
- Indirect discourse. The sun warmed Gretchen’s head and she mused at how long it had been since she’d set foot outside during the day.
- Direct discourse. (Traditional) The Sun warmed Gretchen’s head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve set foot outside during the day,” she thought.
Or
(Modern) The Sun warmed Gretchen’s head. It’s been a long time since I’ve set foot outside during the day, she thought. - Free indirect discourse. The sun warmed Gretchen’s head. It’s been a long time since I’ve set food outside during the day.
Out of these three examples, the first two already have indicators of thought—mused in the first one, and the quotation marks and/or dialogue tags in the second. Introducing italics in either of these cases would be redundant. Italics in the third example, however, might set the internal dialogue apart from the rest of the text, but, as I said earlier, it’s rarely necessary in a short story.
Final thoughts
The use of italics is a stylistic choice rather than a strict rule. Using them to set internal dialogue apart from the rest of the text isn’t wrong, but you do want to consider how your choice impacts the reader. Do the italics add meaning or clarity to the passage? Or do they feel redundant or confusing and pull the reader out of the story.
Let me know in the comments how you decide whether to use italics!
I agree with everything you’ve written here, Lisa. I almost never use italics, with the above exceptions. Emerging writers often love them, and overuse them . . . or mis-use them, I should say. And they can get very tiresome to read.
That’s a great point, Margie. If a reader has to constantly adjust to a style that is outside of what they expect, it is tiring. And that alone can be enough to make them close the book.