How to use capitals, italics and bold
Recently, very recently, in fact, I have noticed a determined increase in the way authors are using capitals and italics and bold. I wouldn’t normally go into detail and write a whole article about this, but in this case I think it is necessary: the point is that some authors – especially indie authors who don’t have access to an editor, and are possibly a bit too concerned about other people reading their work – have next to no idea about how to use these important grammatical tools. When used well, they are powerful, but when used badly…well…let me see…results can prove disastrous…
Capitals: capitals are one of those things. They can either add to the effect of a piece of writing or irritate you beyond belief. My motto? Don’t overuse. And remember that capitals amount to screaming, so when you write a lot of capitals, you’re going to exhaust your reader and potentially make them close the book to get away from all that noise…
it’s certain that any skilled writer can do what they please – providing they can justify it
Otherwise, capitals can be used occasionally when a character wants to make a point. This has been done in many novels, and allows a writer a way of defining a word without having to use italics. Now, here’s about italics…
Italics: italics are really fascinating things, I think. You can say: I went to see the hybrid cars and it’ll indicate that went has some specific tone, or you can leave it plain and make that tone invisible to the reader. Both are powerful ways of getting your message across. Not only that but they also reveal crucial details about how a character uses sarcasm and humour in their everyday speech.
Bold: bold is possibly one of the trickiest things to use in a novel or work of fiction, the reason being that bold doesn’t really have many relevant uses. Where it does come in handy, though, is if you are writing a first person novel. In this case you can use bold as the character who is narrating wishes, which opens up a lot more possibilities than when you are writing in third-person point of view (or as it’s known in the trade, POV).
Of course, these are only my opinions, and it’s certain that any skilled writer can do what they please – providing they can justify it and not make the reader want to throw their book straight through a double-glazed window.
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