For those taking the Fan Fiction Test - Question Disqualified *G*

[catscradle]

Okay, I've been told by DaMoyre that the question "To denote the thoughts of a character, the only acceptable method is:" is unfair. Since posting to lists requires ascii characters only, one cannot use italics (which was the correct answer in the quiz). I still maintain that you don't need italics or symbols to write - he/she/it thought, - but that's just me. So if you missed that question - consider it correct and adjust your score accordingly.

babs, that ought to help you =)

Yoiko. . . well, I write them with love too - but that's not the right answer ;)

*HUGS*

Comments

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna disagree with DaMoyre because there are acceptable ways of indicating italics in ascii format, such as with * marks. So there.

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

See, that's what I thought, but it seems *'s are used now to denote emphasis. Thought I don't see why they can't mean both - you should be able to pick up from the context what was meant. Also - you still don't need symbols if you write - Blah, blah, blah, he thought.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

Well * was always used to indicate something you'd like to put in bold or italics but couldn't because of ascii format. So if you were going to use the "thoughts are in italics" concept then using * to replace that in ascii is okay. In fact some automatic archives look for the *s to automatically convert them to italics for the HTML.

But yeah, beyond that you can do blah blah blah, he thought. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Other problems with non-ASCII characters...

[damoyre.livejournal.com]

While we're on the subject of "italics" and the characters used to replace them, I thought I'd bring this up again.

Hi hi! :)

[damoyre.livejournal.com]

I never said there wasn't a way to indicate italics. There *is*.

In fact, if you want to indicate character thoughts, or place italics in your fic, you can use /blah blah/ OR *blah blah* (although I prefer the first, because the second seems to denote more emphasis.)

You should never use //blah blah// because the double slash will make certain computer programs believe that they're opening a file.

What I said was that having the correct answer as "Italics" in the quiz was incorrect, because unless you're posting your fics to a webpage, where you're allowed to use html format, you really shouldn't be using italics at all!

So the correct answer could be any of the others. I believe Steph had // --> slash and she also had "squigly characters". Now, I *HATE* people who use all kinds of squigly characters to denote different things, I think people should stick with just one - and preferably, with one of the accepted forms - such as *blah blah* and /blah blah/ which have already been mentioned.

Re: Hi hi! :)

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

I was saying that you can use * for both emphasis or thought - if you *have* to use symbols to indicate thought - the reader can pick up the difference by context. I think BQ actually meant the same thing - she just subbed the word italics for thought - since we were talking about using italics for thought.

I still don't care if it's on the unofficial set of fanfic posting rules - just because someone started using /blah/ ~blah~ /blah/ and it caught on, doesn't make it correct. Especially when it caught on simply because the person who started the phenomenon just didn't know how to denote it any other way. Why do we have one set of rules for published materials and one for fanfic in this situation? Published stuff is actually easier to execute and clearer.