: Different ways to emphasize My previous question was "Are paragraph spacing used for emphasis?" and that got me thinking even deeper about emphasizing. I'd like to emphasize to create tension

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The way you emphasize depends on what you're trying to emphasize.

Italics are appropriate in dialogue, like in Rasdashan's example. If there's a chance a particular word or phrase might be overlooked, make it stand out. You could use lengthy sentences to emphasize panic. There's no mental "breath" for the reader, inducing a subconscious quicker read to get to the break. Use a metaphor to emphasize an unusual characteristic. Use alliteration to drive a point home.

Here's a simple example - I want to emphasize that time is passing agonizingly slow for my character who is waiting for something:

The plastic chair squeaked as she sat down. She checked the clock. The second hand was ticking so slowly. It was like it wasn't moving at all. She picked up a wrinkled magazine from the table to her right and flipped through the pages. She was bored. She put the magazine down. Was the clock even working?

Huh, well, the reader is bored, but not in the way the character is bored. Italics are used for emphasis of the slow time and the character's boredom, but this isn't the right scenario for that device.

The clock read 12:38pm. The plastic chair squeaked as she sat down. The clock read 12:38pm. The second hand ticked. Maybe. She picked up a wrinkled magazine from the table to her right. The clock read 12:39pm. Good. She flipped through the pages. The clock read 12:39pm. She put the magazine down. The clock read 12:40pm.

Here, I used both repetition and short sentences. She's bored, she's restless, she's annoyed. The reader starts to feel the same. What will the time read next? Will it be the same? Different? The short sentences might get tedious to read, but it's piquing the reader's curiosity - what is she waiting for? When will it happen?

So, in essence, there is a right and a wrong way to emphasize something, but no solid list of right and wrong ways to emphasize. Each has their own pros and cons. If you're struggling to find the right path to take, try re-writing your scene over in the various methods people have already suggested in the answers and comments. Then, pick the one that works best (or, if you're not sure, an outside reader can tell you how they felt in each version).

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I use the natural flow of the text to emphasize one thing or another. It is a part of the rhythm of the language.

In one scene I had, I italicized a couple of words in dialogue because the character was emphasizing them. It was important to him that the character he addressed understood what he was saying, defending choices he made that seemed most bizarre and counterintuitive to the questioner.

If you invert word order, that adds some emphasis to what is said in that sentence.

Tension ought not be a result of artificial means. You are telling a story, a character is doing something, learning something or failing to - trust your narrative.

As a reader, when I look at a new book, I often read the plot synopsis on the cover and then read the first few pages. If I am not intrigued by the character, setting or tone I will put it down. I connect with characters and enjoy making friends with them - this engagement is not the result of italics but fascinating characters.

Many years ago, I was reading a book set during the French Revolution and it had some interesting characters. I do not know what happened in the last third of it as they had executed the only character really worth exploring (young nobleman with a strong social conscience). I wanted to know how this fellow was going to resolve his conflict. The rest of the characters were fairly stock so less intriguing.

If that book had been filled with bold, italics and combinations of those, I would still have set it down when I did.

That said, inversion of expected word order is a reasonable way to stress a word or two and potentially encourage the reader to recall that phrase later.

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