Friday, August 3, 2012

On My Mind

Here's a writing problem I keep running into lately when I write casually.

When I text or blog, I often use words in all-caps to convey spoken emphasis. Now maybe this annoys you, and if so, I apologize, but I like it. For me, it carries my voice better and makes the writing more conversational.

But I don't know what to do about the word "I." Because it's already capitialized. I've thought of bold or italics, but those aren't easy or very noticable. I fumbled with the idea of trying to spell it out. "EYE" or "IEEE" but that's just clumsy and horrible, isn't it?

Usually I re-construct the sentence, which I suppose is all one can do. In French, there's a way to emphasize by use of the object pronoun. "Je parle." I'm talking and for emphasis, "Moi, je parle!" I'm talking. I suppose I could use a similar repetition, but in English it comes across a bit too elaborate for simple sentences.

Me, I want to go to the movies.  Nah, awkward, isn't it?
I, on the other hand, I do not agree. See, it's just odd.

Oh well. I guess I can't solve this one easily.

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