Mechanics Forum

I totally agree with Amanda about the redundancy thing.

Here's what the Chicago says on the special treatment of text with regards to internal dialogue or thoughts:

"Thought, imagined dialogue, and other interior discourse may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference."

(Thanks for being so friggin decisive, Chicago ... NOT!!!)

Basically, if the text is heavy in dialogue, to have the thoughts stand out as separate from spoken discourse, leave the quotation marks off. If you are writing a piece that is heavy in narrative, the quotation marks may be called for.

Actually, since you mentioned the character Glokta, I would suggest you go and take a look at how Abercrombie's copyeditor treated the copious amounts of internal dialogue in that character's chapters. You will notice that there are few (if any) dialogue tags after his italicized thoughts (no, "he said" or "he wondered"). Do you find that confusing? I don't. We know these are thoughts BECAUSE of the use of italics. Therefore, no tags and no quotation marks are required.







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