Punctuation and text messaging

[Alan]

I am writing a new short story and given its contemporary nature contains text messages between two people. Does anyone have a view on the correct punctuation to frame a text message? I am tempted to use the traditional double inverted commas as for speech " but wondered if anyone has any differing thoughts

[Ann, Supreme Overlord]

I've always seen and used < insert text > but I'm not sure if that's correct or not.

[Christina]

Indenting works and so does italics. I wouldn't use quotes as that denotes speech.

[Alan]

Thank you for your suggestions.

[Greg]

My book, "Bullseye Breach" has some computer chat sessions. Similar but not identical to cell phone text messages. We did it with indents and courier font to set it off from the narrative. And quotes. And bolds to make it easy to see the dialog.

   Lende: “Hey Bill, who’s running MS if yer here?”
   Billgates: “LOL. I’m a different Bill Gates. Big
   Bill is my uncle.”

With a little bit of white space between the chat log and surrounding text.

[Alan]

Thanks Greg - very helpful

[[deleted user]]

Great question, Alan!

[Bruce]

Have you considered using a different font for the text messages?

[Alan]

Hi Yes but not sure if that is grammatically correct. It's interesting I have had so many opinions but not yet found the definitive answer.It isn't technically a verbal response so speech marks " would seem not appropriate at the moment I am using single quotes ' which looks right on paper but whether it is right I am not sure

[Riley, Viking Extraordinaire]

You could always go with a special indent just for text messages, the same as you would for a letter or some such.

[Alan]

Yes that is true thank you Riley for your suggestion