At 10:18 AM 11/26/96 -0800, Ross McKenzie <rmckenzi@euclid.ucsd.edu> wrote:

Several somebody elses wrote:

The problem is that the difference between Thought and Action is too
subtle.  Thought needs to be quoted somehow, but I don't really like any
of the alternatives.
Double quotes: Confused with Dialogue.
Single quotes: Confused with Dialogue.
Fancy quotes: Turns into junk in ASCII-7.
Angle Brackets: Bothers HTML.
Braces: Too silly.
What we <i>really</i> want is italics, but there's no standard,
uncluttered, way of transmitting that.  (Anybody for a Brace to italic
filter?)

	I usually use underscoring.  _At least I think I do._  The other 
Converging Series folk nixed that for the joint 'fic, though.  _Am I 
supposed to use angle brackets now?_

        I've always associated angle brackets with emoticons <g> and
actions and sound effects.  <bbbriinnngg>  <Venkarel picks up the
phone>  Also with a second personality talking or the author interrupting 
for some reason. <Hey, it's for you!  Answer the phone already!>  
Underscores are a bit hard to see; I've always used them to indicate 
the title of a book, song, story, etc.  I like the idea that someone else 
put forth: use double colons.  I've seen it used in some fantasy books 
when people use telepathy.  It looks cool.  ::I wonder if they think I 
really believe that.::  Stars/asterisks are cool too.  I usually use 
them in the place of italics.  Like when I *really* want to emphasize 
things.  You could also use double stars **How does this work?**  Or
make up something involving parentheses or square brackets.  
(*How did I get myself into this?*) 

        Other than that, you could explicitly state the thoughts.
She thought, "No way is this happening."  Or instead of having the
thought "vocalized," you could just place it within the story:  He snorted.
Yeah right!  The answer couldn't be as simple as that.  OR
He wondered what he had done to deserve the lecture.  He had just
asked a simple question and now there were dozens of people
telling him off.  <G>

Venkarel
(who is adding her two cents so this won't be a cents-less post)