No… italics are more appropriate for the thoughts of a character. When used in this way in a book they easily signal the reader that it is a thought and not a spoken word… and in this case you would not use quotations just italics.

I think you should go with quotations. Most people use italics for flashbacks or other ‘special cases’, so if you use them you may confuse the reader. But if the voices of the 2 people are muffled, than italics would work as well.

But the choice is ultimately up to you, you’re the writer!

It all depends on your style of writing.

It’s how you would like to portray the feeling that the overhearing character has.

In my opinion, Italics are generally used to emphasize things, but in this case, I’d say it be more used for a whisper.

So if you’d like to give the feeling that the co-conspirators are whispering, I’d say go for italics.

If anything else, just describe that perhaps the over hearer can’t make out all of the words.

Perhaps when writing the dialog, write incomplete sentences with the “…” in between a few grouped together words.

It’s all basically about how the writer wants to make it feel in my opinion.

Hope this helps!

When writing any story i don’t know that it has to be in italics but quotes definitly.

Good question though. If my teacher was here I would ask him.

I don’t think it is a big deal..

If you find out it should be in italics you can always change it later.

Good luck.

If the character is overhearing the conversation and not participating perhaps he could summarize what he heard latter to another character.

Just an Idea, as long your not using italics

i usually see italics as thoughts…so you may want to put an apostrophe, then quotations…but sometimes that’s s/o quoting s/o else…so maybe just quotations, and make sure in the narrative the reader knows it’s s/o listening in on two ppl

Why write it in italics? Are they magic words or something? There’s no reason to ‘fancy’ the words at all unless you have a good reason, it just makes your story look cheaply written, especially when overused.

In summary: No.

It is a matter of style. Kurt Vonnegut was famous for using such stylistic devices. For example, every time he mentions death in Slaughterhouse Five, he immediately follows with “so it goes”. In several books, the chapters are broken into one or two paragraph sections separated with *’s.

EDIT.

It was mentioned above that you should always use good grammar. That would make for some very dull characters. Read Mark Twain, for example.

Yes, write in the conversation, but the identities of the speakers are optional, unless the narrator identifies them by name first. If they go back and forth, you can have just quotations

Example:

Jenny overheard Trish and Sara gossiping about her best friend in the lunchroom.

“Did you hear the latest about Linda?” Trish said. “Her mother went with one of her friends from work to a policeman’s ball to get fixed up somehow, and now this mother has three boyfriends at once.”

“My uncle’s a cop, and I overheard him and my aunt telling my parents about it the next day,” Sara said. “Auntie said that she saw Linda’s mom throwing herself at other officers who were single and unnattached. And there’s a good number of them here. I wonder how many numbers she picked up?”

“I feel so sorry for Linda. Her mom and all those men.”

“I always knew her mom was a tramp. My Mom knew she was a tramp. But ohmigod, this is ridiculous.”

“That girl is going to be screwed up.”

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