Writing ship's names?

Juliana

Juliana

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A silly thing to be worrying about at first draft stage, I know, but it's annoying me...

In my current WIP I have a number of ships. At the moment, when I refer to them, either in dialogue or not, I italicize the ship's name. But the crew of my MC's ship has a nickname for their ship, and I'm leaving that without italics. So, question:

1. Italicize every mention of a ship, whether full name, abbreviated name (say, for example, the Ranger for the Queen's Ranger) or nickname (same example, Queenie – NOT the name of my ship, by the way!).

2. Italicize full and abbreviated name but not nickname, as I'm doing as present.

3. No italics at all.
 
Juliana said:
A silly thing to be worrying about at first draft stage, I know, but it's annoying me...

In my current WIP I have a number of ships. At the moment, when I refer to them, either in dialogue or not, I italicize the ship's name. But the crew of my MC's ship has a nickname for their ship, and I'm leaving that without italics. So, question:

1. Italicize every mention of a ship, whether full name, abbreviated name (say, for example, the Ranger for the Queen's Ranger) or nickname (same example, Queenie – NOT the name of my ship, by the way!).

2. Italicize full and abbreviated name but not nickname, as I'm doing as present.

3. No italics at all.
Click to expand...

You're right to italicize the full name of the ship. For the other, I don't think they're necessary; but the important thing is consistency. Whatever you decide, do it every time.
 
My Kraxon series has the ship's names being italicized, but I haven't given them any nicknames so not sure on that front
 
Topic solved before I could chip in, but you ended up doing what I am doing, italicised names but not nicknames, oh, not italicised ship's prefix.
 
It's a style guide issue and I think that number two would work for consistency and after that in some of the edits if style calls for the nicknames to be italicized it probably won't be a big issue.
 
Not even SS Flying Dutchman? (the prefix SS could mean Star Ship or Something Stupid, whichever you fancy)
 
For reference (since this is a science fiction forum), Star Trek's most famous ship is written as the USS Enterprise. And is italicised even when referring to it as the Enterprise.

I too have the same issue, with a ship name being truncated or abbreviated. An example might be the USS John Paul Jones, with some abbreviating it to the JPJ. Nicknames are of course a little different as they are different words. So I probably would not italicise an invented alternative name.

For me the trick is to ensure I am consistent and the reader knows what is going on.
 
Another point, strictly in the interests of sharing knowledge etc. I never worry about this in a first draft. These days you can Make a list of all ships you have referenced and search for them at the end and then italicise every instance.

I tend to use several writing tools, some of which are plain text and cannot use bold, italics etc. So I do this later on when I need to tighten things up for proofing.

I in fact did it last night :) I was readying a draft of a short story and needed to italicise the ship names. Spooky :p
 
This is why I will need an editor when my story is done. I didn't even know I needed to italicize the names of my ships. Oops.
 
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