In the following sentence:
That too received a chorus of encouraging "Boo!"s.
should it be "Boos!" or "Boo!"s?
Both seem sorta correct, while also seeming sorta wrong too. Again, this is casual, teasing usage, so the standard rule's probably don't apply. The Boos are obviously plural, yet if each one is repeating the boos, is it a case of plural plurals?
That too received a chorus of encouraging "Boo!"s.
should it be "Boos!" or "Boo!"s?
What stands out to me is the combination of "encouraging" and "Boo!"s. Isn't booing generally considered negative?
As usual, context is everything, as the larger context was of someone telling a terrible pun, so they're teasingly 'encouraging' him to continue with his tale, by playfully booing his puns. However, I didn't want to duplicate the entire scene, just to get the proper punctuation to use for the one sentence fragment.
For even more context, often, when someone's in a REALLY good mood, they tend to get a bit 'giddy' and thus make silly puns just to loosen the mood. And thus this is hardly a formal lecture hall recital, it's playful banter between familiar lovers, or in this case, a lower or two, AND their family who now being older, can also appreciate the playful banter too.
The older kids don't want the explicit details-which seems to be what you always zero in on (with your seeming single focus on the most inappropriate conduct), but they still enjoy teasing the adults while staying above the more embarrassing details.
Sometimes, a pun is just a pun!
Hmm, same question and topic.
https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t13242/boos-or-boo-s
Must be a server move glitch.
Nope, in the other posting he said he double posted.
He might think he double posted, but I think something more complex is going on. When I posted my comment above, there was one thread, and both my comment and SB's initial comment on what is now the other thread were both in the same thread.
Then I refresh the all threads by date list and not only are their two threads, but my comment is in one thread and SB's comment is in the other.
and SB's comment is in the other.
When I saw the second thread, I copied my comment to that one and deleted it from the first one. I thought the second one was going to be the active thread.
It is, and once I got the answers, I should have set the initial one in the Editors Forum down. Yet now that we've beaten this topic into the ground too, hopefully we'll just let them both die a natural death without belaboring the point.
The correction has already been made and I'm well past that point in the ongoing story. So, I'll kill this one on Monday or Tuesday, and leaving on the remnants of this one.
It's interesting that you can boo someone by shouting 'Boo' but you can't cheer someone by shouting 'Cheer'.
On Planet Writing Expert, which is in the Clickbait Universe, they'd probably recommend shouting 'Boo' (showing) over booing (telling) because they've got to justify their twilight existence somehow. Does it need the use of one of your three exclamation mark per novel quota?
AJ
If you cheer someone on, they usually drink instead. But they're not "my" exclamation marks, as I was referencing how others often think that three exclamation marks is three times as excited.
That said, in dramatic scenes in fiction, there ARE often a lot of 'excited utterances', so I do use single exclamation marks more than most non-fiction writers do. Plus, a few dramatic four-letter words also indicate just how serious a situation is.
I inquired a while back, whether it wouldn't be better avoiding unnecessary curses, as they really aren't required, yet I got a definite "Are you INSANE?" vibe for even suggesting it. As one "God Damn!" is worth several 'paragraphs' of showing. So in those case, it is useful, but mainly because it is expected.