How are you depicting email in your stories? Currently, I’m using this format:
followed by the message in italics. When the sender’s name/address is omitted, I’m using italics for the text. But I like the idea of enclosing the italicized text in < > when it is brief and comes in the middle of a paragraph, or to instantly differentiate it from say an italicized passage quoted from a newspaper. Obviously, I would have to be consistent.
I’d be interested in Scrivener folk’s opinions.
The only problem with using angle brackets like that is one of mild authenticity. The address specifications use those to surround the actual address and differentiate from any descriptive naming, like “Ioa Petra’ka webmaster@literatureandlatte.com”. So to put the angle brackets around the entire thing wouldn’t be as authentic.
You might consider always including a from or to address at the top, even if it seems superfluous. After a while, readers will skim this text and skip it if they don’t need it, much in the way the eye just skips over the word ‘said’, after a line of dialogue. Always prefixing with an address sets a good standard so it is clear that the section is an e-mail and not, like you say, a clipping from a newspaper.
From an editor’s viewpoint, it would probably be better to leave that sort of thing up to the production design phase of publishing.
If i received a manuscript with all kinds of brackets and italics and such, there would have to be some pretty gripping sentences at the beginning of the story to grab my interest or else I’d be moving on to the next story in my pile (or email list) rather quickly.
From a writer’s standpoint, I understand the desire to visually depict the difference. What I’ve done is include only the relative information, place it indented a bit farther in than regular paragraphs, and then leave it in normal typeface. “Relative information,” of course, can mean different things depending on context and type of story. I’ve included the tracking path lines of an email before when the email was a secure correspondence between agent provocateurs; I’ve included just the narrative cue that the character was reading an email and then put right & left indents to indicate the email.
If it’s not a lot of fancy changes in fonts and typefaces, a little creativity can be good. Too many and it becomes an eyesore on the page; editors are not known for being wow’d by that sort of thing. If you’re writing with publication in mind, just be aware of that.
AmberV and kirkesque–Thanks for your input. After considering things and your input, I’ve used the < > brackets just once around a senders’ address when it is of interest, and as would be the case with a real email. The novel’s text explains the other occurrences. As for the email itself, I’ve italicized it throughout, which to my eye is a conventional treatment. But I take kirkesque’s point about overdoing it, and would note that the emails all come long after the editor is hooked by the beginning chapters!
Kawasaki, the two most important things about it are uniformity and the strength of the story.
With those two angles covered, you shouldn’t have any problems from an editorial standpoint. Sounds like you’ve got the former under control. As for the latter, I wish you all the best for your tale. 