| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Joel, is this a problem if you leave out the Oxford comma? When referring to three people like this: "Jerry, Tom and Lynda went swimming." ...isn't there a risk in certain contexts that Tom and Lynda sound like a couple even if they're not? Just wondered. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Come to that, what do we all think about the comma before speech: He said, "Hello!" Ramsey of course doesn't use one. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Or my favourite, 'Divide the pie equally between Jerry, Bill, Tom and Lynda.' Without the Oxford comma, this would indicate that Jerry and Bill each get a third, while Tom and Lynda have to split a third between them. Whereas if you write 'Divide the pie equally between Jerry, Bill, Tom, and Lynda', each person gets an unequivocal quarter of the pie. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
God, I'm fucking dull. :<) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Sorry, Barbara, that last comment was made before I saw your message. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
That's okay, Gary, dull can be good. Imagine living with a Robin Williams all the time; you'd want to shoot yourself (or him). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Now that's a guy who needs some commas. Or semi-colons. Or full-stops. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
On the other hand, you could have written: 'Now that's a guy who needs some commas, semi-colons, or full-stops.' It would have got around the problem of having two sentences with no verb.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Walked right into that one, didn't I? Doh.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.108.5.133 |
Barbara, no: 'Divide the pie equally between Jerry, Bill, Tom, and Lynda' immediately makes me wonder whether Linda were somehow being mentioned in dispatches (perhaps she doesn't deserve pie), as there is a grammatically unnecessary pause before her name. There is only one circumstance in which the Oxford comma is appropriate, and that's when the last two items in the list might otherwise be seen as one item. This only happens when the items in the list are phrases or clauses rather than names – for example, I would use an Oxford comma in a sentence like: "I killed the editor because he was wearing the wrong kind of tie, it was raining, and there was an 'r' in the month." If a list of names creates the opportunity for an ambiguous reading without the Oxford comma, changing the order of the names may help. Thus instead of writing: "I robbed several building societies including the Nationwide, Bradford & Bingley, and the Abbey National" you could change it to "I robbed several building societies including the Nationwide, the Abbey National and Bradford & Bingley" However, the former sounds better, and is thus justifiable on stylistic grounds. Essentially the Oxford comma is a stylistic feature with no strict grammatical function. If a writer uses it, fine. If not, then to insert it is in my view (speaking as a professional non-fiction editor) an unjustified imposition. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
It may come across to you as an unjustified imposition, Joel, but consistent style is consistent style; and if a publishing house has adopted the Oxford comma as part of its style, it'll be there, unjustified or not. And at least the Oxford comma leaves no room for misinterpretation of a sentence. Christopher | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
And what about an author's consistent style? I get quite pissed off when the same text of mine appears differently in different publications - that's why I send out a style sheet these days. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Fair comment, but, in putting together an anthology, we're generally faced with three styles: 1. Those who use an Oxford comma 2. Those who don't use an Oxford comma 3. Those who don't know the difference Surely consistency within a book is preferable to a jumble which ends up suggesting that no one knows what they're doing. Christopher | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.228.180 |
Another problem with simple sentences sans Oxford commas, like the first example Jerry, Tom and Lynda went swimming. is that we don't know if Jerry is part of this group, or being told about what Tom and Lynda are doing. The Oxford comma removes all doubt. Here's what I HATE: when writers use semi-colons in dialogue. Often I hate it when they use colons, but speech can accomodate the colon - it cannot accomodate the semi-colon. People don't speak in semi-colons; they write with them. How would you know that last sentence was a semi-colon if I were speaking it?... It's stupid and absurd, and bodes ill: whenever I come across it in a screenplay, I know I'm in for a bumpy ride.... | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
<<<.....Here's what I HATE: when writers use semi-colons in dialogue. Often I hate it when they use colons, but speech can accomodate the colon - it cannot accomodate the semi-colon. People don't speak in semi-colons; they write with them. How would you know that last sentence was a semi-colon if I were speaking it?... It's stupid and absurd, and bodes ill: whenever I come across it in a screenplay, I know I'm in for a bumpy ride....>>> The easy way around that is to employ more em-dashes. Far better than all those ellipses with which writers seem to be obsessed. Christopher | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.108.2.40 |
What I hope we're agreed on is the need to avoid unnecessary punctuation of adjectives – as in 'a grey, creeping thing' or 'a horrible, hopping creature in white'. Craig, there are people who speak in semicolons (mostly academics), but most of us don't. There's a growing tendency for publications to exclude the semicolon altogether from their style sheets; this strikes me as a foolish move, but the frequency of the semi-colon in many Victorian texts would now be considered ridiculous. Just don't start me on the OED's recent decision to declare the hyphen a thing of the past. Proof, if any were needed, that it's edited by a bunch of space cadets who are to language what Vivienne Westwood is to clothing.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
I'm obviously alone in my unconditional love of the semicolon. People don't speak in semi-colons; they write with them. But we are writing dialogue, not speaking it. All written language is an attempt to convey something which is real real by using the tool of language, and the semicolon is simply another method of doing so. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Here's one difficulty I had with a line I wrote recently: "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other(,) unrecognisable growths." I couldn't decide whether to put in a comma in the place indicated because, unlike the other growths, the tomato plants weren't unrecognisable. But I left it out because it read awkwardly. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
I'd also have left it out. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Or should it be: "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other growths that were unrecognisable." ? | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.84.68 |
I'm now absolutely convinced that to punctuate many adjectives is unnecessary . If you read, "There, was my grandmother entering the great library in a floor length red velvet ball gown, complete with walking stick, looking dwarfed by the grandeur of the hall." I thought about putting commas in after floor length and red velvet but it didn't feel right. I've used it occasionally in the past but won't in the future. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
I'd take the one after There out, too. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
Oh dear. I've been reading too many Victorian stories lately and have adopted the over-use of the semi-colon - even running into a couple of uses per sentence. But then ... it seems to suit what I'm writing at the moment. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
My grammar is shocking, by the way. It really is. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.84.68 |
Nah - I like the comma after the there. Bit of a dramatic pause methinks. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
If that's your intention, I'd use an ellipsis: "There...was my grandmother" The comma is confusing. Does "floor length" need a hyphen? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
I'm not able to follow this debate at all. Are you saying that an Oxford comma is an unnecessary comma. Well, to my mind, this is a matter of editorial instinct - and your instinct is either good or bad, and the judgement is in the silky clearness of the text you present, either consciously or unconsciously absorbed by the reader. Standardization and rules would diminish this 'instinct' I have ever been a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, and not only in 'grammar'. Realates also to 'The Intentional Fallacy' and other instinctive/non-instinctive playfulnesses in life. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.84.68 |
Des - I was agreeing with Joel originally - 'What I hope we're agreed on is the need to avoid unnecessary punctuation of adjectives – as in 'a grey, creeping thing' or 'a horrible, hopping creature in white'. I dislike ellipsis and think it is sometimes insipid but like hyphens and dashes - sought advice and left the hyphen out, in the case of the floor length gown. I believe Ramsey to be right in that the author's style should come through. Obviously punctuation not to be omitted rashly - after careful consideration - before anyone mentions it. And I respect that you may want the anthology to look consistent - so how do you marry the two opinions? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Re all Nemonymous editions, I've kept the writer's finished product unless there were genuine typos. (If I felt I needed to change a story, I did not accept it in the first place). There have been rare exceptions to this approach. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.84.68 |
Sorry Joel - I missed out that you have already said that you think that what the author writes should stand and I agree. There is such division in this Oxford comma debate. I remember when I brought it up last year - I think that we all agreed to disagree in the end. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Gary, in the sentence "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other(,) unrecognisable growths." I'm afraid the comma is essential – otherwise you're implying that the tomato plants were unrecognisable too. The word 'other' has two possible meanings in this sentence. To communicate the correct meaning, there isn't any choice – unless you reword the sentence. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
When life seems unreasonably difficult, just imagine being the proof-reader on FINNEGANS WAKE. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Anyone interested in this sort of gubbins should read: HOW TO DO THINGS WITH RULES by Twining and Miers Prof Miers taught me as an undergrad. A brilliant book and a brilliant tutor. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
That's what I figured, Joel. I'll change it to the alternative I quoted below that. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
Ally - try this (if you want to!): "There, entering the great library in a floor length red velvet ball gown, complete with walking stick and looking dwarfed by the grandeur of the hall, was my grandmother." It feels sort of suspenseful, though that might not have been what you were after! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.84.68 |
Script went off last week :>) it went boom. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.241.71 |
Joel, I love the semi-colon; it's contributes to that nice variety we have in expression of language. I could have easily used a colon instead for that first sentence, but a semi-colon nuances it - with the semi-colon, it's closer to what I'm attempting to express. And this is why, Zed, I say we don't speak in semi-colons. We speak fluidly, not studiously. When we speak, we start sentences, we sometimes finish them, we pause a lot. We can do colon lists: "Honey, get us some things at the store: Crisco, zucchini, hemorrhoid cream...." We sometimes trail off, even sinisterly: "I'm gonna get you, you dirty rotten...." But speaking in semi-colons?... It's exclusively a written stylistic. Writing is different than speaking, and writing speaking is sort of a conjurer's task, to make the reader believe he's hearing actual speech. The semi-colon breaks that illusion, for me, every time. "Hello, Johnny; you're home from school." "Yes, mummy; I've come home early." "Shaddup, you; I'm watching me telly." "Feck you; you fecking feckerhead; you're a twat." "Both of you shaddup; or I'll cut up the lot of you." | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.34.81 |
I hate it when people use the semi-colon in place of a colon, as if the two were interchangeable. They are intended for two completely different uses. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Yeah, that's right. This is a wink ;<) And this a smile :<) They mean different things. Hahahahaha. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I disagree with the lot of you. About whatever. :-) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Craig's quotes from his latest screenplay: PUNCTUATING PARADISE, the everyday story of a dysfunctional family of grammarians. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
I like the younger Lovecraft's use of the semicolon; as in: "Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the so-called "soul" is a myth, my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
So now: "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other growths that were unrecognisable." Or: "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other growths, which were unrecognisable." A curse on the language! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Yes, that works. Lovecraft's punctuation is generally sound, even when writing in languages that don't exist. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.170 |
 , Gary. How about on your end, an entire novel composed of semi-colons? And make it somehow about, literally, a "semi colon." | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Sorry, I was responding to Hubert there. Gary, it should be 'that' and not 'which' in this case. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.149.134.59 |
Lovecraft was so concerned about the that/which problem he wrote a story about it, 'The Thing on the Doorstep'. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Joel: Ta. Craig: ;;;; ;;;; ;;; ;;;. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Em dashes and en dashes are often used instead of commas, colons and semi-colons. Which do you prefer - en or em? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
In Martin Amis's novel there is no semi-colon until the last line. At one point, the central character John Self says, "I need to slow down. I need some semi-colons in my life." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Er, I mean, his novel MONEY. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
If you have a narrator who is a sort of non-semi-colon sort of person would you use semi-colons? | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.32.208.231 |
I actually prefer Partners in Crime; far and away the best of Christie's Timmy and Tuppence books. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Well, I guess Amis answers that. Until the end when his character changes his ways. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
A lot old books use em dashes. Even double em dashes (or triple!!!) for ellipsis at the end of speech or sentences. What's all this about Timmy and Tuppence? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
the that/which problem is the bane of my life... :-( | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
". . . when two independent clauses are regarded as being sufficiently related to belong to one sentence, this may be shown [in writing] by a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction, or by a semicolon without such a conjunction." (A GRAMMAR OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik) Admittedly this doesn't sound very helpful. But the semicolon has become unfashionable for a number of decades now, hasn't it? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.170 |
Barbara, the very first Christie novel I read, was long ago, at my grandparents' home; there was (not far from a semi-colon) a paperback book, just innocently sitting there, called BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS. I had only known mystery stories through my dad's old Hardy Boys books, and Saturday mornings watching "Scooby Doo." Tommy and Tuppence were my very first exposure to not only Christie, better mysteries, and (distantly) the lurid... but to the entire world of "adult writing," I'll call it: subtlety in style, over the hammer. A novel that seems to meander and start and stop until it all finally comes together in that inimitable, if now alas somewhat dated, Christie way. I'd since picked up ...THUMBS again, and found it hardly the joy I imagined it always was, or remembered it being. Oh well. Grow up, or die. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Thing on the Doorstep was HPL's only story about sex, I seem to recall. That/which? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.255.170 |
Yes, Hubert; it has. But I still like it; I like it a lot; just not when people are speaking. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Des wrote earlier . . .e all Nemonymous editions, I've kept the writer's finished product unless there were genuine typos. (If I felt I needed to change a story, I did not accept it in the first place). There have been rare exceptions to this approach. . . . So, are you saying that, within a given volume, you're happy to see a mixture of British spelling and American spelling, and British punctuation and American punctuation, and stories making use of the Oxford comma with stories that don't? Seems terribly untidy and inconsistent to me. Christopher | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
So, are you saying that, within a given volume, you're happy to see a mixture of British spelling and American spelling, and British punctuation and American punctuation, and stories making use of the Oxford comma with stories that don't? ======== Yes. Though I do standardise the typographical format of dashes, quotation marks and inverted commas in possessives etc. As I say I use my instinct. So far my instinct has worked, I feel. My biggest concern: no typos! :-) | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Same here, Des. In a book that included tales by Robert Aickman and Fritz Leiber, Manly Wade Wellman and me, I'd try and respect their various usages unless they were actually incorrect. And if they were, I'd discuss it with them. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Hey, Ramsey, we never saw eye to eye over The Blair Witch Project either, did we? Christopher | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 99.225.104.255 |
A year late and no longer of import, but .. "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other(,) unrecognisable growths." Wouldn't you want to set off "unrecognisable" with commas on both sides in order to covey your meaning? "Withered remnants of tomato plants were intermingled with other, unrecognisable, growths." That would restrict the term to those other growths and leave your poor tomato plants alone. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
The tomatoes have rotted and the other growths withered. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.149.139 |
Simon, that's not a matter of style: in this case the first comma directly affects the meaning. Since the tomato plant is not unrecognisable, the phrase 'other unrecognisable growths' would be incorrect. However, I think the distinction between 'other, unrecognisable growths' and 'other, unrecognisable, growths' is one of style alone. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.224.145 |
Anything which adds to subtlety and gives clues as to varying or additional shades of meaning has its place and should be employed whenever and werever possible. My two cents. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 38.113.181.169 |
Joel, I completely agree that the comma is needed. What I was questioning was whether a second comma was needed as well. On rereading the line and your comments, I see both ways work, and mean the same thing... essentially. One comma makes "unrecognisable" a second adjective; two commas makes it parenthetical. Were it me, I'd go with the latter, but I'm the sort of writer in love with parenthetical devices (but, strangely, not with parentheses). | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.74 |
Vampire Weekend have a song featuring the Oxford Comma, you know. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.74 |
Alas, it begins, 'Who gives a fuck about the Oxford comma?' Good song otherwise... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.151.176 |
They also recorded a cover version of 'Shake, Rattle, and Roll'. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.71 |
With the Oxford comma, I see... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
I do'nt no, what your all, talking about? I do really... | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 38.113.181.169 |
Mick's just like me: can't tell the joke without making sure people know it's a joke, and that he understands punctuation. It's might be my greatest liability when writing first-person or dialogue; I'm deathly afraid that when I write a character who misuses a word or makes some sort of grammatical mistake the reader won't realise I did it on purpose. That's why too many of my characters sound so pretentious. Well, that, and that I base them on Richard Gavin's speaking style. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.119.24 |
It's might be my greatest liability... Pardon? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
You should learn to speak proper English like wot we British folk do, like, innit. We is well good at English cos we invented it, din't we? There ain't nobody outside of England who can speak as good English as like we does. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 38.113.181.169 |
Curse you, Curtis!!!! | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.73 |
Oh aye. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.183.61 |
There are a lot of formally incorrect usages that I find inevitable to write in a first-person narrative, as well as in dialogue. For example, only the most terminally bookish people actually say 'as though' rather than 'like' (e.g. "He sounded like he meant business"). It's even difficult to use formally correct language when writing in the third person from a character viewpoint. The difference between formal 'pure' language and language in the context of real use... Gary, help me, what do the French structuralists call that distinction? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.183.61 |
Got it: 'langue' versus 'parole'. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 62.254.173.34 |
Sounds criminal. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.225.68 |
Langue - parole: proferred by De Sausure. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
Where the rot set in. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.225.68 |
I would still say 'as though', but then I ain't no native speaker . . . Bookish? Mayhap. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 38.113.181.169 |
I suspect I'm going to have to loosen up and let my characters make mistakes. Luckily, all my narrators have been pretty bookish, so it hasn't been that much of a problem for me. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.79.3 |
'It's might be my greatest liability when writing first-person or dialogue; I'm deathly afraid that when I write a character who misuses a word or makes some sort of grammatical mistake the reader won't realise I did it on purpose. That's why too many of my characters sound so pretentious. Well, that, and that I base them on Richard Gavin's speaking style.' Sometimes you have just got to dive in and take a chance. Just watched a programme on poetry where the writer uses an inversion, 'It's treacherous, the fen.' I know people who talk like that and I want to put the way they speak in my stories. When I used Yorkshire dialect I asked John Tavis to take a look at it for me but now I think I'd go with the way I feel about it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Speech is messy; people talk in clumsy structures. If you wrote dialogue like people actually speak, people wouldn't be able to make sense of it. So i think the best way is a sort of middle ground, where you try to capture the rythms of speech rather than transcribing it. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
'It's treacherous, the fen.' As attendance at any convention will prove. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Zed – yes. It's a difficult balance. If you represented real speech then you'd have pages of "Yeah... whatever... don't ask me." | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Aye...non sequiters and glottal stops. The foundation of all good conversation. :-) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
God, yes. I've transcribed more interviews than I care to recall. Nightmare. |