Sherman, assuming there are reasonably consistent rules that define what you want in italics, this might not even be hard.
The example you gave though is far too vague.
Quote:
I doubt this is possible he mused
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to
Quote:
I doubt this is possible he mused
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There is nothing indicated that "he mused" is not just a natural part of the sentence... like as in: "She always admired the way he mused." Not the most sensible statement... but certainly you wouldn't want any part of that italicized as internal dialogue.
The other issue is that "mused" doesn't necessarily indicate internal dialogue. He could have been musing aloud to somebody else.
Having said that... if you wanted all sentences that end with ", s/he thought" and ", s/he thought to him/herself" and ", s/he wondered." that's doable. The problem is the potential for considerable variety.
The only way I see this being doable is via a method where upon first pass, the program produces a list of sentences that it believes (based on whatever sort of pattern matching) to be candidates of italicizing as internal dialogue.
The user would then go over this list, and take out all false positives, and rerun the program for the italicization to take place based on the previously produced and now corrected list file.
Not sure how reliable this would be for the specific thing you are proposing it for... but the general principle might work for other similar tasks.
- Ahi