I am reading a story right now that is ok so far except that the author doesn't use quotation marks when people speak and also has 2-3 people speaking in the same paragraph. It can get confusing at times.
I am reading a story right now that is ok so far except that the author doesn't use quotation marks when people speak and also has 2-3 people speaking in the same paragraph. It can get confusing at times.
I think I've become more sensitive to quotation marks since I've written a couple of stories and frequently reread many of the books in my ePub library. The one that bothers me the most is as follows:
"It is certainly a nice day," said Susan, do you want to go swimming?"
It is my understanding that the should be a " mark before 'do' so it would be written as: "It is certainly a nice day," said Susan, "do you want to go swimming?"
You're correct. The one that confuses so many people is the handling of multi-paragraph dialogue by a single speaker. You put quotation marks before the first word of each paragraph, but only at the end of the final paragraph. E.g.
"Para One.
"Para Two.
"Para Three."
The lack of a closing quote is a signal that the following paragraph is a continuation of the dialogue, even if it's internal dialogue (usually using single quotations rather than double quotations, though that's mostly a style-guide issue, and different schools follow their own expectations).
Few readers are aware of these literary 'rules', yet they'll note them when they're missing. They don't need to know why or how, they just need to know why they're not.
"It is certainly a nice day," said Susan, "do you want to go swimming?"
I think the speech needs something stronger than a comma in the middle. I'd write it as
"It is certainly a nice day," said Susan. "Do you want to go swimming?"
AJ
That's how attributions work, they're paired with the statement. However, I've always preferred alternate, indirect attributions:
"It's certainly a gorgeous day!" Susan raised both hands skyward, spinning around dancing. "Let's go swimming!"
As always, there are always multiple ways of saying the same thing, which is what makes fiction so utterly delightful, those odd turns of phrasing.
"It is certainly a nice day," said Susan, do you want to go swimming?"
or a missing quote at the end:
"I won't Mum, talk to you later.
When I got off the phone, the Bank President wanted to talk to me.
Bothering me as much as the missing quotation mark is the reverse, as in
"It is certainly a nice day for swimming," said Susan and went to the swimming pool."
An then there are misplaced quotation marks:
"Trimm the bushes first, he told me."
HM.
I'm an optimist, and I always hope that my readers are so interested in the story they're reading that they don't notice small errors like that.
But I do use Grammarly, just in case.
Most typos are like that, then there are the ones which are too difficult to easily ignore, which is when it's best to minimalize them, so they're not as obvious. It's simply to slight-of-hand techniques, where they're more focused on one, so they simply never notice the others.
A decent story is essential, while a couple of intruding side plots keep readers from not noticing the little details.
Like when the hair color of one of my MCs changed in the middle of a story I posted here recently.
Like when the hair color of one of my MCs changed in the middle of a story I posted here recently.
I have a story in progress where I mentioned that some major, but not POV characters are known to change their hair color often.
Actually, that happens fairly often. Heck, with my flighty ADD and the sheer number of different stories I write at the same time, I've been known to permanently change a characters name, until some kind soulβlike my editorsβpoints it out to me.
So an "Amy" becomes an "Alice" and sometimes a Jack becomes a Bob, though those are typically when I confuse one protagonist for another in a separate storyβan unforgivable error! :(
When my sister and I were in college at the same time (she's a year behind me, and we went to college in the late 1980s/early 1990s...), our phone discussion invariably started with me asking her what color her hair was that week... (She got sandy blonde hair, somehow, and I got the dark brown..)
Women periodically changing their hair color is much more common than men doing so. The closest I ever got was getting a perm once to have curly hair. It was nice for a couple of weeks, yet I never did it again. It just never quite fit my traditional 'pasty white guy' image.
It depends, did you change it back, let it stand or actually change the character's hair color? Again, if it's in the comments that's perfectly understandable (and yes, I get the pointed reference, and thanks for the reference, by the way).
It was a total brain fart, pointed out to me by a sharp-eyed reader. I meant to fix it, but haven't done it yet. Maybe that will be my Sunday project.
Here is an example and one of the few times he did use a quotation mark and still made a mistake by closing the quotation mark in the wrong place.
I grabbed two buckets of balls and warmed up on the practice range. I went inside, and Bill handed me a copy of the schedule book. I asked where the others were, and Bill pulled them out of a file cabinet. I said good job, Bill. Now be sure to collect range fees for nonmembers, and where is Ben Perkins? Bill told me Mr. Perkins doesn't get in until 10 a.m. I said not good, took the schedule books, and played my round. I finished just after 10 am and peaked in the pro shop. Mr. Perkins was screaming at Bill, so I stepped inside. It got quiet quickly, and I said," Mr. Perkins, that's unprofessional conduct." If I report it, you'll be fired. So, get your act together right away, and everyone is on notice we follow the club rules. Mr. Perkins, get this pigsty cleaned up by tomorrow, or I'll hire a crew, and you'll pay for it and left.
I would call that... an attempt at what I would call "reported" speech privately. (Not sure how that relates to established terminology.)
How that works, or is supposed to work in my understanding/belief, is that it's done like that when the narrator/MC (as a rule 1st person, it wouldn't likely work otherwise) doesn't show us the world at all, instead we're firmly trapped inside their head, and only get anything that happens outside from him telling everything by proxy, including any conversation he choose to report on, to the extent/interpretation he chooses. Done right, it's not that bad, and can be quite powerful. And since it's all just an unbroken stream of consciousness anyhow, paragraph breaks aren't necessarily as expected.
Yet, the example provided would certainly benefit from some editing for clarity...
Your terminology is close, it's actually referred to as Third-Party Dialogue, where one character tells what someone else told them. The name derives from the 'third-party' not being present in the conversation. Yet it works just as well if the 'third party' is present yet isn't the one speaking.
I think, what you describe is something else entirely. I didn't talk about one character telling another character about what third said, but about how narrator presents the events of the story to the reader.
What I referred to is narrative style where the whole text is an unbroken inner monologue of the protagonist. When held consistent, there's no dialogue at all, and can't be in principle, because whole text is exclusively main character thoughts. Yes, occasionally including about what he had just heard someone say, but he only reflects on it, or report parts of it, without presenting the actual dialogue.
Narrators of more normal stories at times fall into similar when fast skimming over some events, reporting conversations in narrative because they either aren't as important (presumably) or because they happened in foreign language or are otherwise hard to present verbatim for some reason. So instead of showing dialogue as it happened, the narrator tells the reader about a dialogue that had happened.
Yeesh! That's painful reading. Readers will ignore certain things, yet others just grab your attention and won't let go!
Great example, by the way.
Allegedly there's a school of writing that deliberately eschews quotation marks - Sally Rooney is one example - but speech is handled in other ways that don't result in the sort of hot mess you posted above.
AJ
Under here, I ought to mention a style adopted for fiction publications in Latvian. It doesn't use quotation marks, replacing them with long dashes, and starts speech paragraphs with an intend (nonsensical quick example):
Back in the castle, we arrived in a dimly lit upstairs room.
&Tab -- I think it's somewhere in there, -- Andrew said, pointing to the corner, -- I haven't assembled it ever.
We dug in the pile of borderline trash, apparently accumulated for years and decades.
&Tab -- Is this it? -- I brushed dust off a cardboard box.
&Tab -- Yes, looks like, it might.
&Tab -- You said it's in the original box, this...
&Tab -- It's the postal package it arrived in.
With much of anticipation, I took out my knife and cut the tape.
Note there's no trailing dash if the speech isn't followed by an attribution or action tag. Preceding tag would be it's own paragraph ending with colon:
Andrew exclaimed:
&Tab -- We found it!
ETA: I fail to render the left indent here, so I'm leaving the &Tab explicit as is, you should render it to whitespace yourself...
Understandable that the story in question would confuse you; I can barely process things these days as it is... I'm also one of those guys who use single quotes as well...
That's not an issue, as that's the Imperial British standard. They just reverse the primary and secondary quotations, and is generally accepted, again even when readers don't understand why. They just recognize it for what it is. Though, it always helps to introduce those sorts of things early, to get your readers prepared for how YOU write. Then they know what to expect and can easily adapt.
For example: "That's when Tod said 'Out, out you Cur!'" vs. 'That's when Tod said "Out, out you Cur!"'
Trust me, I spent a long time learning ALL the literary standards, before finally deciding what mine would be. ;)
I have to disagree here. There is no need for the second comma. A comma is used to break up a sentence.
I have to disagree here. There is no need for the second comma. A comma is used to break up a sentence.
The second comma is needed.
"you cur" here is comparable to a person's name or title.
The example often used for this situation is:
"Let's eat, Grandma." vs. "Let's eat Grandma."
If they're addressing the grandma, it's the first with the comma before the name/title.
I would also say that 'out you cur!' is not a viable clause. 'Out, you cur!' is.
Or you can consider it in terms of pauses. One would not say 'Out you cur' with no pause. There's an implied pause between 'out' and 'you cur'.
In terms of the original, there should also be a comma after 'said':
"That's when Tod said, 'Out, out, you cur!'"
Or the same with quote marks flipped for British standard.
I would also say that 'out you cur!' is not a viable clause. 'Out, you cur!' is.
I don't know about the clause comment, but a comma always precedes the person being addressed.
"Out, out, Sam."
"Out, out, sir."
"Out, out, Captain."
"Out, out, you dog." (in the above example, "you cur")
I'm sorry but I just don't hear the second comma when I say it outload. I hear the pause on the first out but not the second one. But then again, I was never good at English in school. I had to settle for a GED.
I hear the pause on the first out but not the second one.
It's not a pause comma. It's a comma used with a "direct address."
Direct address, also known as vocative, refers to when a speaker names the person or group they are addressing in a sentence.
If you are addressing someone directly by name, salutation, or pronoun, and that direct address is separated from the rest of the sentence, you should use a comma to set it off. It doesn't matter if the name is in the beginning or the end. For example:
"John, come here."
"Come here, John."
"Your Honor, it wasn't me."
"It wasn't me, Your Honor."
By the way, the following is from Grammar Girl:
Pauses Do Not Equal Commas
The "put a comma everywhere you'd pause" idea is an unfortunately common myth. You do typically pause when you're reading a sentence out loud and you come across a comma, but that doesn't mean that every time you'd pause when you're speaking, your sentence needs a comma.
The "put a comma everywhere you'd pause" idea is an unfortunately common myth.
I think that's a blinkered view and probably unjustified.
Punctuation such as commas provides instructions for people reading aloud as to the appropriate places to pause or take breaths. How else can authors inform orators how they want their stories phrased?
AJ
Punctuation such as commas provides instructions for people reading aloud as to the appropriate places to pause or take breaths
Yes, people often pause at places where a comma is located. However, that is not the purpose of a comma.
In dialogue, commas are used to isolate words not spoken from words that are spoken by the speaker. In dialogue, commas are also used within parenthesis to isolate the person being spoken to from what is said to the person. Consider the following:
John said, "Bill, take the bat and ball and put them away." In this sentence, John is the speaker and Bill is being spoken to. The first comma isolates the identification of John as the speaker from what he said. That is why the comma is outside the words said by John. The second comma isolates the spoken name of the person being spoken to from the rest of what was spoke by John and the parenthesis enclose all of the words spoken by John.
Commas are also used within quoted text for other purposes.
The first comma isolates the identification of John as the speaker from what he said. That is why the comma is outside the words said by John. The second comma isolates the spoken name of the person being spoken to from the rest of what was spoke by John
Both commas would coincide with a pause, or a hesitational emphasis, if that sentence was read aloud.
I accept there are instances where a speaker might not pause at a comma. Switching your example around,
"Bill, take the bat and ball and put them away," said John.
IMO few speakers would pause at the second comma, although they might intone the 'said Bill' differently to show the switch from direct speech to narration.
I'd be interested to know how text-to-speech programs perform these days. My experience of text-to-speech was from decades ago when everything was read in a robotic flat monotone.
AJ
I think that's a blinkered view and probably unjustified.
This is the link to her article: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/where-do-i-use-commas/
Thank you, but sadly my computer seems to time-out on the human verification test, causing it to start afresh ie I get an endless whirly thing.
I regard Grammar Girl as similar to the curate's egg - good in parts.
ETA: I read the article this morning - my library's public access computers had no problem. Grammar Girl says she has no idea why people might think a comma might represent a pause.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, when Britain had to move on from the simplistic punctuation used in Mediaeval Latin, there were two broadly equal factions. One was the Elocutionists, who wanted punctuation to inform how to speak a piece. The other was the Syntacticians (sp?), who wanted punctuation to provide syntactic clarity. Retrospectively the Syntacticians are regarded as the winners, but the differences between the two approaches is actually very small.
So I reckon that Grammar Girl article was one of her weaker efforts, and if adding a comma clarifies how to read a piece without confusing the syntax, I say go for it. But then we Brits have always been a bit more relaxed about commas than other English-language variants.
AJ
The one undisputable fact is that there are too many rules in written English. I was just dinged for breaking a rule in that last sentence because I used "To" instead of "Too". If I had spoken it, you wouldn't have known I used the wrong spelling. Just got dinged again because I didn't add a comma after "it".
The one undisputable fact is that there are too many rules in written English.
I believe it's that English has too many exceptions to rules.
True that!
"i before e except after c" was a rule I was told. So where is the c in their?
Keir is a Scottish name, not English, so it doesn't count.
But there are many exceptions such as; either, neither, weird, weight, foreign, leisure, seize, forfeit, height, protein, caffeine, forfeiture, codeine, and heifer. The exceptions in English are what make it one of the hardest languages for a foreigner to learn. And don't the exceptions prove the rule?
The exceptions in English are what make it one of the hardest languages for a foreigner to learn.
Native English speakers too.
That was my point. It's one thing to remember the rules. It's something else to remember the gazillion exceptions to those rules.
Why I don't even try, and internally read written English using Latvian phonetic alphabet, with is strict, except for the e that can be Γ¦ (or rather is supposed to be Γ¦ by default and become narrow e according to complex rule that parse the word backwards), and has no distinction between v and w, no x or y whatsoever (usually x is assumed to be ks, y is eiter i or j), so it's not ideal, but still better.
Spoken English I regard as vaguely connected different language I can understand with some effort but can't reliably reproduce.
How do you explain 'Two-tier Keir', where tier and Keir rhyme?
Proper nouns do not follow standard phonetic patterns.
Even identical spelling doesn't matter. Think:
Lima, Ohio ('Lye-mah') and Lima, Peru ('lee-mah')
Versaille, France (ver-sigh) and Versailles, Indiana ('ver-sails')
Cairo, Egypt ('kai-roh') and Cairo, Illinois ('kay-roh')
And so on.
and Cairo, Illinois ('kay-roh')
Yeah, but any example with Illinois is meaningless because of:
'Ili-noy' vs 'Ili-noise'
Yeah, but any example with Illinois is meaningless because of:
'Ili-noy' vs 'Ili-noise'
As a Flatlander, I can say definitively it's it's 'Ill-uh-noy'. π
As a Flatlander, I can say definitively it's it's 'Ill-uh-noy'.
Hello neighbor. I'm a cheese head.
Hello neighbor. I'm a cheese head.
I married one from Sheboygan and have a son who works for Epic Systems (healthcare company, not gaming) in Verona.
Proper nouns do not follow standard phonetic patterns.
Perhaps that should be qualified: American proper nouns do not follow standard phonetic patterns.:-)
AJ
You mean American proper nouns like Pat and Tony? What's so odd about those phonetic patterns? You're thinking of "Personal Pronouns", so you need to get your terms straight. Pronouns are in no way, shape or form "proper nouns". There are correct and incorrect nouns, yet "pronouns" are an entirely different beast (ex: "he", "she" "it's" or the ever popular indefinite pronoun "they" and "their").
That was a simply typo or author-correct error, I'm sure, yet that just furthers my earlier, separate point.
Perhaps that should be qualified: American proper nouns do not follow standard phonetic patterns.:-)
Sean (name) vs bean (legume). Oh, wait, Sean Bean. π
"or when sounding like A, as in neighbor or weigh."
Except when their feisty beige reindeer neighs at your heinous neighbor Keith's weird sleigh.
Contra 'c' are conscience, science, and others.
I love how the rich will pronounce words differently too sound more snooty.
Rodeo Dr.: In Beverly Hills ro-de-o becomes ro-da-o with a long a.
La Canada: There is a small town next to JPL that instead of La Can-a-da becomes La Can-ya-da.
La Canada: There is a small town next to JPL that instead of La Can-a-da becomes La Can-ya-da.
Because it's Spanish. The name of the town is actually La CaΓ±ada (technically, La CaΓ±ada Flintridge). The tilde indicates that 'can-yada' is the intended pronunciation.
Because Americans have a nasty habit of eliding ALL diacritical marks, it makes a mess of trying to pronounce words that use them.
We don't need no stinking squalidly line.
I suggest not reading my work, as it's full of dots, squiggly lines, and other horrible things, not to mention innumerable non-Latin characters! π
Luckily, you can add them manually, as I do that pretty often, even with older, imported words like cliche, adding the html code for the non-English demarkation. Yet, as always, if you don't know what your full options are, you'll never take advantage of them, or even learn how in the first place.
And no, these forum posts don't accept ANY html coding (other than the few listed ones, and the aforementioned HR).
Luckily, you can add them manually, as I do that pretty often, even with older, imported words like cliche, adding the html code for the non-English demarkation. Yet, as always, if you don't know what your full options are, you'll never take advantage of them, or even learn how in the first place.
I use a plaintext editor on my Mac (BBEdit) with full UTF-8 support and know all the key combinations to add diacritical marks and non-Latin characters, no HTML necessary. So I can simply type:
Γ© Γ¨ Γ§ Γ Γ± Γ€ Γ₯ ΓΈ ΓΆ Β₯ and so on. (All typed directly with keystrokes)
Russian characters are just a keyboard layout switch away (built into Mac OS). Japanese characters are generally cut and paste directly into my text editor, or here:
"γ©γγγγΏγΎγγγγγγγ¨γγγγγΎγ" (DΕmo sumimasen, arigatou gozaimasu)
The submissions I make are in SOL's markup language (modified Markdown).
Anyone with some computer knowledge and a Β° of patience can get lots of symbols. Just my 2Β’.
Γ© Γ¨ Γ§ Γ Γ± Γ€ Γ₯ ΓΈ ΓΆ Β₯ and so on. (All typed directly with keystrokes)
I just learned something the other day on my Mac. Let's say you want to type an "e" with one of those things above it (e.g., Γͺ). All you have to do is hold down the "e" key until a pop-up appears. Then you select the "e" with the appropriate thing above it.
Yechh: Windows
Insert
Symbols
More Symbols
Insert
"dammit, wrong symbol - and now they charge me yearly for this privilege."
Hang head in defeat.
I just learned something the other day on my Mac. Let's say you want to type an "e" with one of those things above it (e.g., Γͺ). All you have to do is hold down the "e" key until a pop-up appears. Then you select the "e" with the appropriate thing above it.
Yep, that's how I get ones that I don't know the quick sequence for (i.e. opt+key or opt+key+key).
Heck, I recall the days when you had to type the number code for the various characters along with the keys to access it. Glad those days are long gone now. Then again, I also recall coding in binary too. Never again, thankfully.
Heck, I recall the days when you had to type the number code for the various characters along with the keys to access it. Glad those days are long gone now. Then again, I also recall coding in binary too. Never again, thankfully.
I always enjoyed coding in assembly language. I worked on video games for ColecoVision including Donkey Kong, Slither, Time Pilot, and Galaxians in Z80 assembly language and for a consumer digital alarm clock for Spartus using TMS-1000 assembly that sold 100,000+ units.
I also did quite a bit of coding for personal reasons in 6502 and 680000 assembler. I always enjoyed the challenge. Now it's all PHP, perl, python, and C, but for my own purposes, not employment.
Well, I quit coding a long time ago. I started on Mini computers, Dec (Digital Equipment Company) Minis, so when they went belly up, I had no desire in starting from scratch. I knew the various languages at the time LISP, Basic, Assembler, COBOL, C and C++. Especially because, as the time, the only jobs I was likely to land were maintaining outdated systems, which did NOT seem like a wise career decision, as there's little change of advancement, since nothing is likely to ever change.
I started on Mini computers, Dec (Digital Equipment Company) Minis
I worked for Prime Computer for a few years both in Framingham, MA and Oak Brook, IL.
In my case, my main focus are my novels, where I use the html commands fairly extensively, as it makes creating the books and then converting them to eBooks through ePub's easier.
You're right though, relying on UTF-8 is a game changer (it took me forever to finally figure that out, always doing it by hand for years). Even after switching to UTF-8, I kept hard-coding things. It wasn't necessary, but familiar things are strangely comforting, even when they're merely holding you back.
Even now, I still mark the spots in each chapter where particular characters are, just in case, as I still retain uneasy feelings about not doing it manually. I've NEVER liked Markdown though, as you've probably guessed, I prefer being in charge of what I'm doing.
The nice thing about Markdown is that it can be used by Scrivener to generate PDFs and ePub files (.mobi, too, but that's deprecated by Amazon). Using the SOL markup language means I can write in plain text and people can actually read the .txt files.
That allows me to search my 15,000,000 words in under 2s, including using regex to find or update things. Just today I wanted to change a sequence of text across all 3000+ chapters (averaging 5800 words per chapter), but only some instances. I spent 5 minutes constructing and testing the regex and it worked perfectly to do in less than 5s what it would have taken an hour to do by hand.
Having everything in plain text without having to insert HTML codes gives me far more control of everything than any other method. It also means my entire corpus takes up less than 100MB of disk space.
JPL
I haven't been there for about 40 years. I used to haul computer equipment and other gear in and out of there.
Rodeo (Ro-DAY-oh) Drive is also the Spanish pronunciation, which makes sense given the history of Los Angeles (Los An-HE-les, in the original pronunciation). Every letter is pronounced, the stress goes on the second-to-last syllable by default (barring an accent mark), and so forth.
It's not a 'rich' thing - at least in the LA area - it's a Spanish-language-heritage thing.
By the way, 'Los Angeles' itself - in the form of calling it 'The City of the Angels' - is also a corruption. The original name was something like 'El Pueblo de Nuestra SeΓ±ora la Reina de los Γngeles' (there are variations on that), which translates to 'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'. In other words, it was the City of Mary, not the City of the Angels. But it's not really clear if Anglos are responsible for that particular corruption or if the more complicated name was shorted by the Spanish / Spanish-heritage residents before Anglos got involved with things.
In any case, if there's a potential Spanish language heritage to the name, it's worth checking on that as a source rather than assuming it's some sort of assumed snootiness.
As with a lot of mnemonics that were taught a few generations ago, it's a false rule. There are actually more exceptions to the rule (even in the version quoted by jimq2) than there are words covered by it.
However, the "rule" does work for teaching young kids because it works reasonably well for common words. So when you're 8 and learning basic spelling, the rule works fine. When you're an adult and trying to write consistently, buy a dictionary, because the rule won't help you.
As an aside, if you're linguistically minded, the rule mostly applies to words that have a French origin. Even then it's not really a good rule as there are too many exceptions, that's just where it works best.
Or mayhaps, "Begone, yon cur!" as then it's a simple noun, rather than a proper noun, if you want to go full Shakespearian with it.
Yep, I'm somewhat dyslexic, so I utterly DEPEND on editors to catch my screw up, as I NEVER see them myself. Yet, editors are rarely interested in editing online forum posts, as they're not always the best career choices.
And ystokes, the second commas adds emphasis, rather than clarifying the sentence. It's the added hesitation before the final home-run, catching everyone off guard. Though again, I simply never saw it there, so it was hardly by design. Though I've always been an 'optional comma' guy when it causes an unwanted pause in the story.