Using ordinary words having special meaning

[J5V]

I'm really good with the technical side of typesetting, and realise that it's really a publisher's job, but I could be self-publishing, and regardless of that, I do at least need a draft to indicate where the word should have special mark-up...

My story uses the word They to describe an enemy that is dangerous to refer to, so I italicise that word when it is used as an indirect reference to that enemy.

I can have a paragraph when someone says the word up to four times, and I'm concerned that the italicised They, Them, or Their can be distracting in quantity. So something like this, where They are mentioned a lot, might not flow too well.

As a compromise, I've tried italicising just the first instance in a paragraph, but it opens any remaining "Them"s to ambiguity (especially when a group of people are talking about Them) and it lessens the value of italicising in the first place.

What would you do?

 

[HareBrain]

I'd just use a capital "T", I think, and not italicise at all. If you did italicise, I wouldn't do only the first occurrence in a paragraph. Consistency is crucial to not confusing readers.

 

[J5V]

I'd just use a capital "T", I think, and not italicise at all. If you did italicise, I wouldn't do only the first occurrence in a paragraph. Consistency is crucial to not confusing readers.

Fair enough. One drawback: I'd lose the ability to show any special meaning for the first word of a sentence.

 

[The Judge]

Seconded on both points, but I'd say definitely the capital-letter only. Using italics amongst non-italicised words would to me indicate stress or emphasis being placed upon the They, and I'd read it as such. Reserve the italics for when they're needed.


EDIT: so don't use "They" at the beginning of a sentence!

 

[J5V]

… EDIT: so don't use "They" at the beginning of a sentence!

I'll count instances, see if they can be painlessly re-worked.

 

[mosaix]

Just a capital 'T', I think. As TJ and HB have said.

 

[J5V]

Thanks all; I've removed italics for special words; it reads just fine.
Italics is now just for emphasis in dialogue, and for thoughts (unquoted, but I'll have to think again if italics don't work in most e-readers).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

but I'll have to think again if italics don't work in most e-readers

They do work in five kindle models I tested (one earlier than Kindle DX and one 2015 Paper White.) Also in Kobo Aura H20.
The earlier kindles don't do Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew etc, though some greek words in the standard fonts work and your HTML / CSS mark up needs to be perfect to select serif, non-serif (both proportional) and non-proportional (typewriter style). They all do variable sizes and bold.
I always export to HTML and then import that to Mobi Creator (free) and/or Calibre (free).
Specific fonts don't work in most eReaders.

Probably Basic support in all:

• Normal / Italic / Bold / Italic Bold
• proportional Serif, proportional Sans, monospace*
• tiny to large text
  
• forced page break
• H1, H2, H3 automatically as links in Table of Contents**
• Left Indents,
• left justified, right, full, centred (if you use "full" then the user ONLY can have that. If you select Left, then the user can select justification, except on very old Kindles. Some of them can actually do it, but have no menu option).
• Limited Table support. Only have very small tables due to screen size or layout breaks.
• All models do inline images, thus the odd Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew word can be added by a small image. Earlier Kindles don't have text flow (float left CSS/HTML) so an attempt to have an image for a drop cap has image base sitting on base of text line.
• Hyperlinks to anywhere else in the book.

Amazon's conversion of Word Docs is poorer than can be achieved. They appear to use MS's own Word to HTML tool and then command line version of Mobi Creator (they bought Mobi to get the jump start on developing the Kindle Reader software).

* Tricky to get right from MS Word / Open Office / Libre Office.
** A feature of the software building an ebook from HTML

All eBook creation is via an HTML / CSS intermediate stage as internally eBooks are a container file with separate images, CSS and HTML (encoded as XML in ePub) like a web site. Some eBook physical Readers will support external HTML links. All apps do.

There are other interesting features that are not normal HTML (like forced page break) such text that can't be paged to, only via a link and in Kindle/Mobi format ability to have a database. There is limited javascript support. So creating a text adventure book is possible. Sadly the HTML client side Image Map feature isn't supported (Why? it's simple!) on any reader or else a simple click and point adventure would be possible. The models without touch allow the joystick to select and click a text or image hyperlink. I suppose a small array of images with links might work.

 

[J5V]

Thanks Ray. I'm keeping it as simple as possible.

 

[tinkerdan]

When I did my books the style guide that the editors used called for italicizing all ship names. There were a few other things we italicized and I'd think that it would be a poor e-reader that couldn't handle those and even bold typeface.

That said: I have in my books often unknowns that could be called it or they; but since there are humans in the mix and we tend to name things that are new, I didn't find any problems with constant 'they' references. Someone would always conveniently name 'them'.