So I have been wondering, if someone screams or yells and you want to particularly want people to know at first glance that they are yelling, do you put it in all caps, or do you bold it? Here are a few examples:
1) "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Trixie screamed at the top of her lungs.
2) "DON'T TOUCH THAT!!!" Trixie screamed at the top of her lungs.
3) "Don't touch that!" Trixie screamed at the top of her lungs.

What is the correct way to put that example? All caps with 1 exclamation point, all caps with 3 exclamation points, or capitalize only the first word but in bold? Someone help me, I just don't get it as I heard all caps isn't proper grammar!

"Don't touch that!" Trixie screamed at the top of her lungs.

No need for bold.

927395

Agreed. Though, frankly, when characters speak in the equivalent of the Canterlot voice, I employ the bold text.

I'm pretty sure that the proper grammatical way to do it is with a normal sentence, ended with a single exclamation point, and clarified with a dialogue tag.

EX: "Don't even think about it, buster!" she yelled as the foal pointed a fork at the toaster.

It's much more fun, on the other hoof, to do it with CAPS! But grammar's not always fun.

Either 1 or 3 are fine. Extra punctuation isn't all that necessary. All caps aren't really all that necessary but as long as you don't go J.K. Rowling and abuse them you should be fine

Alternatively,

"Don't touch that!" Trixie screamed at the top of her lungs.

I very rarely use allcaps, and rarely use bold (mostly for the royal Canterlot voice). I suspect that doubled exclamation marks would be frowned upon even more from a proper-grammar perspective.

If you had do choose one, though, I'd go for the bold. I think it'd be less likely to get you dinged from for bad grammar.

Regular yelling is just with an exclamation mark.

ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE IS WITH CAPSLOCK AND EXCLAMATION MARK!

#3, without the bold highlighting, should cover it about 95% of the time. Describing how they say it can also be used for added emphasis, provided that you don't habitually use it for every line.

"Is it safe? Is it safe!" shouted Stockton as he rolled to an ungraceful stop, dumping himself from his chair, and barricading his ponderous mass behind the seat cushion.

"Yes!" shouted Peterson with relief. "At least I think so. I don't see anything in here that looks like a bomb. Mr. Hadley, could you take a look at.. Mr. Hadley? Mr. Hadley!"

Mr. Hadley was in a state of distress. His eyes bulged, and their fierce unfocused stare seemed to be on the cusp of channeling a torrent of raw hatred into a formidably tangible manifestation. The same raw hatred that, were it to escape the rigor mortis of his lips, would erupt forth in a deafening crescendo of thunder, bellowing a wordless unholy curse that would rend asunder the many souls of all life in all universes.

However, he simply appeared to be choking. On air.

"Mr. Hadley.."

"NEVER!"

"DO!"

"THAT!"

"AGAIN!"

"I.. I don't think the bomb was in here," Peterson offered helpfully.

"Of course it's not!" Hadley snarled. "Never mind booby traps or motion-sensitive triggers, you would have just manhandled it hard enough to make a lump of Play-Dough spontaneously detonate!"

Personally, I would use all caps with one exclamation point, but only very rarely, such as in the usage of the Royal Canterlot Voice. You should never use multiple terminators such as exclamation or question marks (unless you're using the interrobang ‽ which is often written as ?! or !?). While all caps isn't really proper grammar either, one must sometimes bend the rules of proper grammar in order to get the point across.

In this case, unless there's already been some shouting going on, I would leave it as "Don't touch that!". If, however, there has already been a shouting match, moving to all caps would emphasize the increase in volume.
Italics are probably a better idea, as suggested by 927406

There's more than caps or bold; I use italics for shouting, screaming, etc., as I use bold for the Royal Canterlot Voice, as was mentioned. It's a different form of over-wrought emotional speech designation, one I think works better, in some circumstances.
As always, your mileage may vary. Please consult with a professional before asking. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. Do not take yourself so seriously.

It's cases like these where I throw grammar out the window. You need to convey an idea, a feeling, an emotion, a scene! If proper grammar is going to hinder your expression, forget about it. And if you do it right, your readers won't even care or notice you've broken grammatical rules in doing so.

I wouldn't use bold. I only use it to make the occasional word stand out. It also depends on the level of screaming.

Yelling: "Don't touch that! It's very delicate!"

Exaggerated yelling: "Don't touch that!!! It's covered in radioactive waste!!!" (the end is somewhat extended by the extra !!! and the sentence as a whole id more angry and powerful)

Screaming: "DON'T TOUCH THAT FOR THE LOVE OF CELESTIA YOU'LL KILL US ALL!" (screaming at the top of your lungs)

If you want to really seal the deal and tell the reader this character could not possibly scream any louder, employ CANTERLOCK and BOLD. Though I generally don't need to go that far.

927424

one must sometimes bend the rules of proper grammar in order to get the point across.

^ THIS!!!

927419 (You realize I just *had* to go search that story "A Bomb in the Building" when I read the dialogue out of it)

I'm always in favor of putting the description of what is going on before the text, such as:
Trixie flinched as a stealthy movement caught the corner of her vision, as if a small filly hoof were reaching with the utmost slowness for the red, shiny, candy-like button she had just gotten done lecturing the Cutie Mark Crusaders about. While diving over the table in a frantic effort to save the universe, she managed to scream, "Don't touch th--"

But she was too late.

927574

Oh, this little story right here?

I was considering posting some of Captain Laurie "I get lonely sometimes" Lancaster, but i'd be hard pressed not to just post all of it. (he is rather easily excitable)

“Miss Sparkle! Miss Sparkle, yes, sorry, thank you all for stopping. Miss Sparkle, I have instructions to escort you back to the Princess.”

“Oookay. It’s just Twilight by the way.”

“And I’m Laurie. Sorry we haven’t had a chance for proper introductions. Ah, Captain Laurie actually. No wait. I’d have to check the regs on how fast a field promotion from the Princess is supposed to take affect. Oooh, no wait - I need to check when my new pay grade takes affect first, oh god I hate the paperwork that comes out of that office. Augh! Anyways, sorry about that. Oh, good news! I’m happy to let you know that your friend Aa.. Actionjack.. Applesauce.. oh gods.. “

“Applejack?”

“Yes! That’s the one. I have some important news about her! She’s ahh.. good. She’s doing good. Don’t ask me anything else because that is everything I know at the moment.”

927368 In all honesty? Unless it is some sort of super special magical amplification, I would almost say never employ all caps. True, some do--Stephen King does I am pretty sure, but when he does it is rather rare.

FiMFiction does support small caps, with the tag "smcaps". like this, you see. For people who speak very loudly, such as the Royal Canterlot Voice, that is the preferred alternative because it's less obnoxious on the page than normal capital letters.

For yelling in normal dialogue, your dialogue plus your dialogue tag should be enough to get the point across. If you need to bold and all-caps and use neon signs to get across the fact that a character is yelling, You're Doing It Wrong(tm).

927888

All caps isn't that big a deal when used sparingly. In my opinion, this is the ascending order of dialogue and loudness:

1. Normal text with a period/comma. "Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle," she said calmly.
2. Normal text with an exclamation mark. "Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle!" she shouted.
3. Italics with an exclamation mark. "Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle!" she screamed frantically.
4. All-caps with an exclamation mark. "HELLO, MY NAME IS PRINCESS LUNA!" she boomed, blowing Twilight Sparkle through several homes and an outhouse.

Anything more than all-caps is just excessive and obnoxious. 3 levels of increasing loudness is enough.

More to the general topic of the thread: for me, bolding signifies some sort of unusual way of speaking that may or may not be related to loudness. For example, in one of my fics I had the stars talking to Princess Luna and Celestia, and their speech was in all-bold, all-italics with no quotation marks in order to symbolize their unusual manner of speech that wasn't really talking with sound at all.

Comprehension is beyond you, but this is through no fault of your own. These are the limitations of the baryonic form.

"The what?"

Your flesh is weak, a mere prison for your power. Relinquish your flesh, and a new universe awaits your call.

At that moment, Celestia finally realized what the increasing glow of the eye signified. Eyes wide, she tried to teleport away.

We demand it.

Heliostorm beat me to it.

I use single italicized words to emphasize the way a word is said.

Luna glared darkly at Celestia, her sister's guilt-ridden form and refusal to look at her admission enough that she had secrets to share. "... Are you saying you did this to me?"

Unfortunately, I tend to do this a) too often and b) in the narration itself. I guess I treat the narration like a character of its own, as though it's me telling the story around a campfire.

All italics is reserved for thinking and perhaps telepathic conversation (no quotation marks for the former, but definitely for the latter).

This is just great, Twilight Sparkle thought spitefully as every moment in this new reality made it harder to deny.

"Twilight, listen carefully," Celestia thought briefly, smiling as her ever-loyal student's eyes glided smoothly to hers. "I'm going to charge him. When I do, get everyone else inside the castle. Understood?"

I consider all bold letters to be a wild card; perhaps some "unusual" way of speaking (like the stars as Heliostorm said, or in the case of my story, a god mentally talking to and corrupting someone).

Never use multiple exclamation points. It just looks like you're trying too hard. Same for all caps.

927414 IT CAN ALSO BE IN BOLD AND LARGER FONT SOMETIMES!

928567

I don't really like the use of italics for telepathic conversation as it's very easy to confuse with emphasized dialogue. I like putting that stuff in brackets instead of quotation marks. However, there's no real standard for this, so I guess anything goes.

It's perfectly fine to use italics to emphasize words in the narration.

Oh, and since you asked in that other thread... /reminds you to read Fragment.

927368

It's cases like these where I throw grammar out the window. You need to convey an idea, a feeling, an emotion, a scene! If proper grammar is going to hinder your expression, forget about it. And if you do it right, your readers won't even care or notice you've broken grammatical rules in doing so.

THIS!

I would say it depends on the situation.

Personally, I'd use caps or bold if it was, for example, someone shouting to each other in the heat of battle or similar...

Actually, I can't come with any actual examples, but suffice to say that I use a bit of everything from time to time. I don't think there's one 'right' way to write someone shouting.

927402 Actually grammar can be fun.
I'm here to remind the next generation of writers about a rule that has been ignored since the invention of texting!
The one about how if it is in quotation marks, as a form of speech, most rules can be thrown out.

I agree you need to reiterate before or after the speech how the speaker is talking, but in the quotation marks use Italics, bold, caps what ever you need to get the character's style of talking across. Some put emphasis on certain words when talking, even yelling and you need to make sure the reader understands that.

Ex. "Youse! Oveh' dhere. YEAH! I'm'a talking to youse."

i use caps when i want to point out anger or rage

personally I just use caps, because italics and bold don't work on my computer for some reason, it just brings up code?

929088

"Tah think I t'ought I wuz doin' it wrong all dis time! T'anks!"

At the least, it makes Mark Twain's writing that much more grammatically accurate.

929812

Uh, putting things in quotation marks doesn't automatically make it grammatically correct. Actually, it doesn't affect the grammatical correctness at all. But it's ok for dialogue to be grammatically incorrect, because people don't speak with perfect grammatical correctness.

929917

Yeah, I just misspoke is all.

Gotta work on that whole brain/mouth thing.

929928 She's just being nit picky. The fact that you've found a classic book with a simalar example, proves my point.

BTW there are many forms of poetry that don't follow typical rules of grammar.
My fave is the Rant not only does a good one break margins, have the second line indented, it also encourages run-on-sentences!