Italics and Internal Thought: Another Aspect

­Having read a little further in Lawrence Block's book, Hit Me, I found a new twist on using italics to express direct internal thought. It deals with the POV character thinking directly about the words that someone else might say aloud. Here's how Block dealt with it (at page 74).

Likes his food, Keller had thought, noting O’Herlihy’s bulk, the fit of his jacket, and in his head he heard the voice of a middle-aged Irishwoman: “Ah, but doesn’t he carry it well?” Likes a drink, Keller added, taking note of the florid complexion, the network of broken blood vessels in the cheeks and nose. “Ah, shure, and don’t they call that a strong man’s weakness?”

A few pages later (page 78), he uses the same technique--italics in parentheses--to  deal with Keller thinking about what he might say aloud to a person.

 And then all he’d have to do was go upstairs, and give the doorbell a poke—no knocker on this door, not unless the new tenant added one. “Hi, I’m your neighbor from downstairs, I don’t mean to disturb you but I’ve got water coming down through my bathroom ceiling—”

 At page 304 he provide another example

What he could have told Denia Soderling:
        "See, there's a very famous U.S> airmail stamp of 1918, Scott C3a. There ere actually three stamps with the same design--a six-cent orange .. [he continues writing in italics within parentheses for two pages.]

Another author who follows the same practice as Block is Tess Gerritsen; for example, see the prologue in The Surgeon.