Dialogue tags!

I've heard a lot of different opinions on these tricky little critters. I've seen dialogue tags used in a lot of different ways and I've heard a lot of different opinions on them.

So, here is my question, to get the discussion going:

What do you think about the tag "he said" or "she said"?

Discuss.

Use "said" as your speech-verb, not one of the synonyms, unless you really know what you're doing; you want the reader's attention on the dialogue itself, not the act of speaking it. In my opinion omitting these tags entirely, when you can without confusing things, is best.

If you can get your hands on them (I say because I think they're out of print ...), I highly recommend the two volumes of science fiction criticism by "William Atheling Jr" (a pseudonym of James Blish), The Issue at Hand and More Issues at Hand. One of the chapters (I think in the second volume, but I'm not sure) deals with this very issue.

One thing that a lot of self-taught authors seem not to have learned (I've had to explain this at least twice here on HW alone since I joined last year ...) is the use of commas in punctuating dialogue when using speech tags, and when using action instead of speech tags.

Here's some examples of what I am pretty sure is correct usage:
"This is a test," he said.
"This is a test." He pulled the switch.
"This is," he said, "a test."
He said, "This is a test."
"This is not a drill!" she said.
She said, "This is not a drill!"
"This is not a drill!" She ran from the room.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
He asked, "Why did you do that?"
"Why did you do that?" He fell to the floor.

See, my favorite trick seems to be illegal by KingJon's standards. And that user is a genius at just about everything writing, so I will believe him if says I am breaking the rules. I am just not sure how much I care if I am breaking the rules.
My usual is something like this:
Lord Terin drew his sword, "So it has come to this."
I never really learned that anywhere, it just became my way of avoiding speech tags wherever possible, since I am still highly redisent to have dialogue without some form of tag, since I was taught to never have dialogue like this:
"Hi there, how are you?"
"I am fine."
"Can't you come up with a better answer than that?"
"Three."
"What?"
"Three. That's my try at a better answer."

Do you think I can get away with my mixing of sentence and speech? Microsoft Word doesn't know any better, and it really is my style.

* discusses avidly *

* for a long time *

* suddenly realizes that she will have to type it all in *

0.0

* clears throat * Just a moment, I'll have to get back to you on this....

While I agree with Kingjon that you should use said the most, and particularly when you're inexperienced, there are always times to use other words. For instance, a question followed by said instead of something like asked will always throw me off. I've occasionally noticed that enough uses of said in a row starts to irritate me for some reason, but I'm not sure if I'll really notice most of the time. But it is something that's happened a few times, so it might be something to watch out for. Or I might be the only person in the world that is ever bothered by it, and even that isn't often.

That's simply a run-on sentence. With a speech tag ("said" or a synonym), or with other similar verbs (such as "heard"), the dialogue is the object of the verb, but in that example by the time the dialogue starts you already have a full and complete sentence.

By the way, the easy test I developed (after learning how to handle dialogue and related concepts in Latin, as it happens) for whether a "speech tag" is grammatical or not is to recast the sentence using "that" and indirect quotation instead instead of a direct quotation; if the sentence still makes sense, it works, and if not your original wasn't grammatical either. For example: Recasting "'I'm cold,' she said" as "She said that she was cold" shows that the original was proper, but "'I'm cold,' she shivered" becomes "She shivered that she was cold", which doesn't make sense because the original wasn't grammatical.

As an entire conversation, I agree that you don't want that. It's important to have tags at the beginning of a passage and periodically throughout (though using action instead much of the time, so long as you use punctuation grammatically, is often an improvement---so your instincts here are good) to make sure that it's obvious who's talking at all times. But it's perfectly reasonable to omit attributions for a while.

"Your hair's a mess!" the boy shouted at his sister.
"It is not!" she retorted.
"It is too!"
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Children!" their mother interrupted from the doorway. "Behave!"


Computer grammar checkers---especially those in low-end word processors---are notoriously bad. I wouldn't rely on them for anything more than catching the most egregious typos.


Yes, routinely using "asked" for questions is reasonable; I should have mentioned that. Though I find it's quicker to become annoying than "said" is if used too often in a passage.

No; like any idiom "he said" an become tiresome after a while. This is why varying it with things like "replied," "answered," "shouted," and the like occasionally as appropriate is reasonable, as is hanging the sentence structure (put the speech tag before or even in the middle of the dialogue, not just always after), using adjectives, or using simultaneous action instead of describing the act of speaking (which is what "said" is). The point of the guideline to "just use 'said'" is that most of the time our eyes just skip over "said", only noticing who's talking, while "declared," "exclaimed," "expostulated," and even more unusual "said-book-isms" draw attention to themselves---and the dialogue itself is what's important, not the act of speaking it.

Yeah, I could tell it's a run-on technically... but it is how I write at the same time. Do you think that that version of speech-tagging could fall under a breakable rule? I wouldn't write run on sentences in any other form; I am always careful to punctuate somehow to avoid run-ons. Wouldn't technically any dialogue without a tag be a fragment then? If that's permissible... what about run-on dialogue?

Okay, that's about what I thought. Generally things like declared and exclaimed are probably entirely useless for writing. Expostulated, though, might, I suppose, be useful for when someone who uses words of that sort is, well, expostulating, but I'm not sure about that.

* bounces up and down * Oh! Oh! Oh!

I can't wait until I get a chance to say something....

I love grammar.

The run-on is because a direct-quotation dialogue form connected to another sentence with a comma (or, in the "corner case" of the quotation ending with some other punctuation and the attached tag following rather than preceding the quotation, marked by the attached "sentence"not being starting with a capital letter unless its first word is proper) is precisely equivalent to the reworded form using indirect speech and "that," so "He swung his sword, 'I bid you be gone!'" means "He swung his sword that he bade her be gone", which is obviously ungrammatical. The quotation is the object of the speech or perception verb, which is also why "'This is nonsense," he said" doesn't contain a fragment but "He said." by itself is a fragment, as well as where the run-on-ness off non-speech verbs attached to dialogue as if they were speech verbs comes from.


I agree (though there's a place for them to be used very occasionally for variety). However, some writers (inlcuding, notably, the translators of the NIV) apparently think that "says" should be avoided in most cases and use things like "declared" routinely instead.

Now that...is beyond excessive... I'm surprised I hadn't noticed in the NIV if it's that bad, though. I don't use it myself, but I know people who do. Although I guess I'm also less bothered by the use of things besides said than most people.

I may be reading a bit much into the intentions of the NIV translators---perhaps it's just in certain constructions, not generally, that they routinely use words like "declared" instead of "said." (The one construction I'm absolutely certain of is "declares the LORD" where others have "says the LORD" or "saith the LORD.")
But for my more general point: In my seventh-grade English class we had an assignment to list as many synonyms for "said" as possible, which gave me the impression that as a writer I'd want to use them. And Blish writing as Atheling (in the collections of criticism I mentioned above) has a chapter (which was a magazine column) almost entirely devoted to just this issue, so we can gather that in the '50s and '60s the "just use 'said'" guideline was not generally followed.

I am not questioning the grammatical correctness of my methods. They are clearly outside the bounds of real grammar as practiced by English teachers. But as regards using them... do you think I can get away with it? Or will I be forever hounded by grim spectres of grammarians shouting curses upon me for my wanton use of illegitimate verbiage?

Sometimes it's not only "OK" but "the right thing to do" to break the rules. (And, to quote Kipling again, "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays / And every single one of them is right.") But:

A) Unless the reader trusts that you know what you're doing---and demonstrating that you know and understand the rules and conventions is how you gain the reader's trust on that point---breaking the rules is an indication that you don't know what you're doing---and if you don't know what you're doing in the area of grammar, you're probably less likely to know what you're doing with the plot, or worldbuilding, or any of the other things we want an author to be good at?

And B) We have a license to break the rules on occasion so that we can when we have a good reason to do so, not so we can whenever we feel like it. For example, The spelling, grammar, and such in Huckleberry Finn are (from a pedant's perspective) atrocious, but Twain knew what he was doing and did it deliberately (and said as much in the prefatory matter), for good reason. Similarly, Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed violates the usual rules about "unity of time" (a principle identified by Aristotle, I think) by alternating chapters from two different arcs (so that the second chapter follows the second-to-last chapter chronologically, the third follows the first, the fourth the second, and so on, but there's good reason for this (in both the story itself and what it's about); I'm told that F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night did the same thing. But if "J. Q. Self-Published Author" (I specify self-published because traditional publishing both is supposed to catch problems in editing, and adds stages where errors can creep in unintentionally---see anecdote below) had similar weirdness, I'd just put it back on the shelf (or close the ebook preview) and go on to the next.

(Anecdote, which I heard about third-hand: There were apparently some really bad SF paperbacks back in the '70s or so with, by the impression I got from the stories about this, perhaps a dozen "typos" per page or more, all introduced by the printers; the same stories serialized in even the cheapest magazines would be entirely clean.)

I might add...not to cause offense, but just to give some food for thought...that I know MANY people who say that incorrect grammar is just their style (and I'm not pointing out anyone on this thread, because I haven't seen anyone on this thread write atrociously).

My response to that is, change your style. You should not be known for your bad grammar and saying "that's just my style" is actually insulting yourself.

Besides, readers don't enjoy constant run-ons and awkwardly constructed sentences even if your characters do talk that way. Communicate it some other way, I beseech thee.

Grammar is not so much, I believe, a stringent set of rules to make what you write 'correct'. It is more a method by which we make a string of marks intelligible. * smiles * And not only is that so...but even if you wanted to write within the convention, there is no convention on a good many things – even things that a lot of people claim there is a convention for. See – different people claim different conventions. * grins * I haven't seen a lot of grammar discussion, but the one I did see consisted mainly of people saying 'I was told'.

Anyway....

(I would like to add to kingjon's list the times where you say the tag the paragraph before the actual speech, and when you use a colon after it instead of a comma.

They ran off. He said,

“Wait.”

and

They ran off. He said:

“Wait.”)

In my opinion, Reiyen's method of doing speech is really interesting. I like it. * smiles * Though I think it would be more concinnuous if you put the tag in the paragraph before the speech...

I agree that it is not 'correct'. But I do not see that as a reason to not do it. It is perfectly understandable. And it is impossible to be completely 'correct' anyways...so why try? * laughs a bit * That's my view. Some people say that splitting sentences, or doing one-word sentences, is not correct...and as far as I can see, looking at technical grammar, it isn't really. But. I like it. And...it is clear what my meaning is too.

That's my philosophy of grammar.

One reason why is that a lot of my favorite authors do the same thing...have their little ungrammatical quirks. And...since they are my favorites, I want to write like them.

An example is Frances Hodgson Burnett. She has a funny way of doing speech tags that I don't remember seeing anywhere else. It was like so:

“He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for th' fun of it. Does tha' know how to print letters?” suddenly.

And:

“My word! that's riches,” said Martha. “Tha' can buy anything in th' world tha' wants. Now I've just thought of somethin',” putting her hands on her hips.

I...wouldn't say that was 'correct' grammar. But it is nice, understandable, and helpful.

Anyway...about 'he said' 'she said'.

I don't see any reason not to use them, except that they might be monotonous (as Arien mentioned). They never bothered me, because they were so invisible, but I still try to avoid repeating them tooooo many times in a row.



Eh.... * slightly grinning * It made sense to me. In fact I just got inspired and started writing a scene including that....

*Pops in* I found a very good post on dialogue tags on Go Teen Writers. It is written by a published author who knows what editors and agents want the dialogue tags to be.

Zee Linketh

These are tricky devils. I tend to omit them entirely.

Which way?

In which way are they tricky devils? I expect you know that. Every way.

So I guess you were asking how I omit them. I guess I don't entirely, since that's kinda impossible, but I get rid of them as quickly as possible. So after ensuring my readers know who's saying what, if necessary, you know, to avoid confusion, I stop tagging and just have a new paragraph for each character's reply.

Eh...yes. I know. * grins * I'm a writer after all....

Yes, that is one of the ways I was guessing you did it. It is simply hard to avoid confusion with that method – you have to watch yourself.

The biggest problem with that method is when the reader is distracted in the middle of a conversation, and then has to figure out who's talking when he comes back to it. Also, for some reason I seem to almost always have at least three characters in a conversation, and it just doesn't work so well then.

True, but if the characters are unique enough, the reader should be able to tell who said what.

Emphasis on should though. Usually, it's the case, but sometimes it's nice not to have to figure it out, and other times (not saying this is the case with you) the author doesn't do as good a job writing unique dialogue for each character as he should.

Yes and no. It's a set of conventions by which we make ourselves understood to our readers---who, we hope, will include not only our current peers but generations to come. Like the conventions of etiquette and decorum, or of art or music, the conventions may be ignored if we can trust that you know what you're doing, and if you have a good reason for setting them aside. But like other such conventions, it's not a good idea to set them aside lightly, or just because someone else did.

For many things there is not yet a standard; for a few others the standards are changing. That doesn't make it any better an idea to throw off all standards.

Snce we're discussing a convention by which prose from centuries ago is still readily intelligible today, and (we hope) our writing may be read and understood by our generations to come, "I was taught" is a fairly strong justification---the whole point of a convention is that, whether it's perfectly logical or not, it's shared by the entire community. And I've been too lazy to go pull Fowler or Strunk & White off the shelf.


(I've forgotten whether "my list" was correct or incorrect idioms ...) I'd advise against using that form in most cases; it's probably technically correct, but sufficiently rare to draw attention to itself rather than the speech (the same reason avoiding "said-book-isms" is a good idea).


It's quite possible to be completely grammatical. And even if what he intended to convey by "his method" is quite plain, it actually means something quite different (in his original example, that the character transmitted his words by the action of swinging his sword), which is (on some rare occasions) actually what an author means.

Some things (fragments and run-ons in particular) are acceptable in dialogue and in-POV narration (because that's how people think and talk) in moderation, but not in ordinary prose.


Let me rephrase that slightly: Some authors seem to think that (to use this example) "'I'm cold,' she shivered" is roughly equivalent to "'I'm cold,' she said. She shivered." while instead it means that her shivering conveyed the words "I'm cold." So technically it's less a matter of grammar than of usage---to paraphrase The Princess Bride "I do not think that construction means what you think it means."


Or if you have something else going on at the same time that you have to describe at sufficient length to go in a separate paragraph ...


Even so ... One of my writing books, Writing to Sell by Scott Meredith, explains the need for periodic dialogue tags even in a conversation between two quite different people with the example of a stretch of dialogue in which---because the author relied solely on alternating paragraphs to keep track of who was talking---the villain is suddenly shouting "O help!" and the damsel in distress is growling, "Scream all you want; no one can hear you."
In any case, "if the characters are unique enough" is a big if; by the end of a book about two brothers (for example) the reader might be able to tell them apart just by their dialogue, with no help from tags, but I would't count on it.

Insightful as ever, kingjon.

Yeah, I agree that dialogue tags are necessary. Even better, action beats. Otherwise the characters are just talking... Aren't they doing something while talking?

If the characters are doing something while talking, we need to be careful how often we use action to mark the speaker, and how much action in general we describe in the scene---we don't want to distract the reader's attention away from the content of the dialogue. But, on the other hand, if the characters are talking while doing something (note the difference?), it's entirely appropriate to intersperse dialogue with even lengthy paragraphs describing action.

I think there is something to be said for speech tags being overused, though. Also, I think always using said, and other such speech tags are not always best for the story. I do not think that you should be too creative, either, but I think we should also watch blanket statements about speech tags. Some of the greats, after all, do not strictly follow what has been said in this thread.

I am sorry if I was seeming to say that we should skip convention and consistency and what is being taught...I didn't mean to. What I was trying to say is that the teachers disagree, not that you shouldn't listen to them. I can edit writing very strictly myself (as Lycanis would know a little of ). Your list of the correct ways of writing dialogue tags was very good, and I abide by that all the time (and when I don't, I tear my writing to pieces til it comes right * grins *). But since people don't agree on conventions, and language is a live organism, really, I don't think that 'I was told' should be the only reason to use a specific syntax. We need to look at our grammar and lexicology and do it the best way that we can come to a conclusion about – taking into account what the conventions are, and logic, and multitudes of other things.

But language does change, as you mentioned, and I don't think that is a bad thing. I try intentionally in how I say things to change it for the better. I'm the sort of person that finds a good word, and uses it even if the dictionary claims it is 'unused'. That is why I think that adding the way Reiyen does speech tags to the list would be a good thing. It is a helpful syntax, and I think it would be an improvement to use it. And at least one author who I respect and whose writing I like (and therefore wish to emulate) uses it (with the action in the paragraph before the speech, like I suggested earlier).

Rare in modern books perhaps, but not in my favorite ones. So I use it. I try to learn from the books I like. * smiles *

I see what you mean by saying that that is what it means.... * thoughtful * But I think of it more like the structure of this sentence (the second one) : 'He was tired. He ate his supper, washed himself, went to bed.' Or just as easily with an 'and' before the 'went', if we put a corresponding 'and' before the speech. The speech is an action of the person, and it is connected to another action of his by a comma. It doesn't need to be stated that it is speech, because it has quotation marks. * smiles *

Yes, I think I see what you are saying...however I don't really agree about it being unacceptable in ordinary prose. Maybe not in the way that I used it, but there are ways that it adds to the prose dramatically (for example, off the top of my head, the beginning of Emeth's prologue to 'The War of Weaving Strands').

Oh, I see. That wasn't what I was meaning by it...sorry. * laughs * What I was meaning by it is that 'shivered' becomes a new word when used differently than it is normally used, like how a lot of the words we use today originated. For example 'critique' (I think Strunk mentioned that one in his book – I can't remember, and our 'Elements of Style' fell to pieces so I can't look it up ). Critique didn't used to be a verb, if I remember correctly, it was only a noun. But now we go about 'critiquing' things all the time. ;D

Yes, I know what you mean.... I've heard people say that – 'if the characters are unique enough'. But if you have as many characters as I do, it makes less and less sense as I try to use that technique.... * wry * Not everyone's character selections are made up of Yodas and Jar-jar Binkses. * grins * And sometimes everyone is from the same place. And sometimes the characters are related and talk very similarly. (Sometimes my brother and I – well, lets say, A lot of the time my brother and I will say precisely the same thing when we are talking to each other, or at least think of saying it. It's a race to see who says it first. ) And sometimes they are conversing in a situation where you can't tell who would say it because they would all have said it if they had got to it first – like if a loud bang suddenly happened right behind everyone, and one of them said “What was that?” (though not always such an ominous situation...).

And besides, if it starts getting too difficult to tell who's who the reader ends up having to solve riddles instead of just reading a story. That's happened to me.

I may be missing something here, but it seems to me that the solution to the issue of using actions as speech tags is simply to do it like this:

"I'm cold." (Name) shivered.

By putting a period at the end of the speech, the the shivering is no longer being said to be how it was communicated, and the shivering is, in effect, simply an action added to an otherwise 'untagged' bit of dialogue, and, I think, should work just fine.

Yes, that would be the way to do it if you don't want the 'shivered' to be referring to the speech, I believe.

Quite. As I (think I) said above, it's entirely reasonable to deviate from convention if you know what you're doing. The reason I've belabored the "just use said" point is that I got the impression from some of my teachers, and apparently some authors still believe, that you shouldn't use said, so the refutation needs to be particularly clear.


Yes, teachers sometimes disagree, but since any particular language's grammar isn't a purely rational thing (in contrast to mathematics) "I was taught" is arguably the best place to start a discussion; once disagreements appear we can either find more authoritative sources we both accept, or we can find some soure of common ground and work our way forwards by reason.

Since, like I said, grammar etc. aren't purely rational things, and the main aim is to be clearly understood by our peers and generations to come, in my opinion we ought to follow convention (which is what "I was taught" boils down to, unless the teacher was demonstrably wrong) unless there's good reason not to---like I said, diverging can be eminently reasonable if you know what you're doing.


I like to use archaic and rare "good words" when there isn't any more common equivalent, and to even coin new ones when I have to---but we need to remember that unless these words catch on (which is statistically unlikely ) using them can inhibit communication, since our readers won't understand them.

Whereas I find it distinctly unhelpful; I objected so strongly to it not because it's unonventional or "wrong," but because it already means something that's not what he's trying to make it mean. It's as if an author decided to use colons or left-parentheses instead of commas in most constructions where commas are conventionally used---there's no reason to do it that way when there's a perfectly good way to convey the intended meaning already, and doing it that way significantly confuses other idioms. Or like the amusing mistake that Lynne Truss took as the title of her book: "a panda ... eats, shoots and leaves."


Remember, the aim is to communicate with current and future readers; if a convention has been "out of fashion" for centuries now, it's probably not a good idea to use it unless you're deliberately aiming to evoke the feel of those earlier eras (e.g. if your story is set in Regency England).


But if there isn't a speech-verb, the speech-action is implied, so what was said shouldn't be attached to the previous action as if that were the action of speaking.

That's a simple "verbing" of a noun; it happens all the time. Changing the meaning of an entire construction is much, much rarer, and usually takes decades if not centuries to become widely accepted---there are still debates over the Oxford comma, for example.


I should note that the crucible in which my views on grammatical convention were forged (to use a rather overly strong metaphor ...) was few years on the editorial board of my college's student literary magazine. A substantial fraction of the submissions were ... works ... whose authors apparently thought that randomly breaking (inane) prose into multiple lines, or removing all punctuation, or not capitalizing anything, made it "poetry" and worth publishing. e. e. cummings knew what he was doing (most of the time); these imitators did not. So "my favorite books did it this way" is not sufficient justification . "I know what I'm doing, and I have a good reason for it" can be (so long as that's true).


Precisely---just like I've been saying all along.

What balderdash! Said is a perfectly good, perfectly reasonable, and just plain classic way to say things.

* fervent agreement * * grins at 'balderdash' *

*smiles * Jay always did like that word.

The Pudua system of writing, *grits teeth and hisses at the very name* encourages you to come up with extremely creative ways of saying things.
They have you come up with extremely vivid adjectives, such descriptive adverbs they're almost silly, and demonize the poor word, "said".

They say that it's boring, and so come up with things like, "gritted" and "snapped" (how many people really try to bite others while they're talking?).

There is a reason for this of course. Most fledgling writers tend to write in a cliche manner, and don't use extensive vocabulary. The idea is that once you have to write seriously, all the ostentatious wording that you've been using, because it is so unnatural, will tone itself down and will turn into simply good writing.

That's the theory anyway.

It's not because said is a vile, egregious word that puts readers to sleep instantly with it's magic wand of boredom. Said is a very useful, common word. They're just banning it as a means to make students a little more creative for a limited time period.

Er, I wouldn't generally associate either of those with biting, actually. I mean, snapped can be used in connection to biting, I guess, but it's not nearly exclusively used for that. I certainly wouldn't consider "snapped" to be even a moderately unusual descriptor for someone speaking. It's rather common, in my experience, and I even use it in normal conversation. In fact, looking it up in a dictionary, the speaking related definition comes even before the definition for its use like "the twig snapped". Gritted, though, is a little odd to use as a replacement for said, although I don't think it would throw me off if I did encounter it.

That sounds like what Blish (writing as "William Atheling, Jr." in a column collected in The Issue at Hand, which I mentioned above) calls "said-bookism," which he defines as "the systematic avoidance of the verb 'said,' in a misguided search for variety," and labels a "beginners' mistake."


The trouble is that when it comes time to write "for real," we write like we did in practice---so insisting that students practice writing prose full of a "beginners' mistake" is highly dangerous. And the idea that in writing "for real" any ostentatious habits will iron themselves out is unrealistic---in previous generations, some authors cultivated that style, since that's what the editors wanted ("hack-work" sold better than excellent or innovative ideas).


Blish-as-Atheling quotes one Wolcott Gibbs' instructions to writers for the New Yorker, back in the '40s:

And:

I'd rather have students develop their creativity by practicing avoiding said-book-isms and adverb-overuse than by developing those beginner mistakes into an art form ...

I know. * chagrin * I have seen several people who say that it is not a good idea to use 'said.' I quite agree with you.

Yes, I agree. Grammar is so complicated, there is no way we are going to get anything that is completely logical out of it. * grins * 'I was taught' is a very good place to start.

However I learn from my books; they are my teachers more than anything. That's where I learned grammar – except for the names of the (alleged) nine types of words; I learned that from madlibs and Dangerous Book for Boys (* grins * now you know, have been fairly warned, and can stop listening to me as soon as you like). So that is why my references of authenticity are to authors instead of teachers.

But convention today will be different convention tomorrow, the same as convention yesterday is different from convention today. How do you mean that obeying the convention today will make our writing more easily understood by readers tomorrow?

What do you mean by 'good reason not to'? What would be a good reason?

But in most cases the meaning that it already would mean makes no sense and is not useful. Whereas using that construction (which could mean what Reiyen wants it to if you look at it a different way) in the new meaning in many cases makes sense and is useful. * tilts head * And I think that the more ways you can say something the better. And a new way of doing something could especially be permissible if part of an author's style, because the readers will get used to it.

“Out of fashion”. * nods slightly *

Basically, I don't care if it is out of fashion. * smiles * See, I am a person that forms a belief on something, then acts on it. Maybe it is not in fashion, but if I think there is a good reason to do something, I do it. It is not in fashion for me to do a lot of things that are part of my life, not just grammar, and I don't have that as a very major consideration. A consideration, yes, but not major – if there is no reason not to go with fashion (reasons being sometimes as minor as 'I like it this way'), I'll go with it. But if there is, I won't.

This results in me eating, dressing, living, and, apparently, writing, in a very strange way to most people. You don't have to, of course...but that is the way I do it. * smiles * So basically, I agree to disagree with you. I like writing using that way of speech-tagging. You don't.

(Incidentally, I don't really think my writing has an old-timey flavor...but I wouldn't mind if it did. I like old-timey books. )

Is it enough to say that I don't agree? I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. It is clear from context.

Right. (What's the Oxford comma? I've never heard of it.)

I have never heard of E.E. Cummings, so I am not precisely sure what your example is about, however I think I know what you are talking about. All I can say is, yes. I have seen a lot of style quirks abused and used distastefully. For that matter, I have seen a lot of normal grammar and words abused and used distastefully. I try not to use them distastefully if I do use them, and I always try to have sufficient reason before I use anything, whether learned from a teacher or read in a book.

* agrees *

Personally, though I don't think that people should try and come up with weird words just for the sake of being 'colorful', I do think that if a word works best even though it is not commonly used in that context it shouldn't be discouraged.

Yes, it isn't wise to habitually make mistakes for practice... I do see how it might be a good exercise on occasion to do strange things, like write a short story without any adjectives or so on, but not as a habit.

At last! Juliet makes my argument perfectly, and in terms I can understand!

Yes, but why require the context? What's the harm in putting a period there and capitalizing the next word? Is it so much harder than a comma? It's one thing to break the rules to accomplish something; it's another to break them because people can still figure it out.

That's entirely understandable. The only problem with it is that any given author is just one "data point" (unless he or she is tremendously influential ... in which case other "data points" reinforce that one), and a single example of a construction (or of an author who uses it) isn't enough to demonstrate that it's a good idea. The rules of grammar are, like dictionaries, partly descriptive and partly prescriptive; I've argued here mostly from the "prescriptive" side (describing what the "rules" are and arguing that they ought to be followed), but have elsewhere argued against a supposed rule of style (introduced in the latest revisions of the Chicago Manual of Style---on the use of italics, as it happens) because it seemed to me to violate long- and well-established common usage. (But that's very much a tangent ... sorry )


Conventions do indeed change (usually slowly)---but the reason we can still understand the great authors of the past several hundred years (even Middle English is still mostly readable!) is that each generation didn't discard even most of the received conventions and start afresh, but generally followed what they had been taught (which, early on, amounted to applying Latin's conventions to English). So if this tradition of generally adhering to the conventions handed down to us continues, our work will likewise probably continue to be readable to the generations to come. But also, from looking at history, the past few generations' notions of "novelty as the highest virtue" is a fluke, and we'll eventually return to the norm---and there's a lot more written following the old conventions than there is "modern" "experimental" stuff, so I anticipate that the larger corpus is more likely to be readable for longer.


I can't think of any better way to put it than that, sorry ...

I don't know , which is why I try to follow the conventions. On the other hand, several not good reasons (not bad, just insufficient) include "I felt like it," "I think it looks better that way," and so on.


My point is that, parsed according to the normal conventions of grammar, Reiyen's construction doesn't make sense---"he drew his sword that it had come to this". It only makes sense and is useful if the conventions of grammar are changed so that a quotation attached to a sentence with a comma without a speech verb always has an implied "said." (Note that this interacts quite badly with the supposed convention (which I alluded to above), introduced in recent revisions of the Chicago Manual of Style, that thoughts should always be delimited by quotation marks, not indicated using italics.)


The fact that there are so many ways to say so many things is one reason English is so hard for non-native speakers to learn; in my opinion it's far better to have, for every given case, one good way of indicating it. If there's multiple ways it doesn't much matter, so long as everything is quite clear to the ordinary reader, but it's best not to multiply constructions without necessity.

Yes, if the author has something weighty enough to say and appears to know what he's doing, readers will readily put up with an odd habit of grammar or style or two. But things like this are more usually taken as indicators that the author doesn't know what he's doing, and if an author doesn't know what he's doing grammatically he's far less likely to know what he's doing in the other areas (worldbuilding, plotting, characterization, and so on).


(I ought to cut that quote down significantly, but don't immediately see any good place to do so without taking out the bits I'm trying to reply to ...)
Feel free to ignore convention in general; I do myself often enough. But my point remains that, as authors, we're trying to communicate, and tossing out long-established conventions of grammar and usage or reviving obsolete conventions is highly counterproductive---there's a reason historical-fiction authors rarely write even the dialogue of their stories in Middle or Old English, or in Latin, or in Ancient Akkadian. The issues we're discussing here aren't nearly as disruptive to communication as that would be, but the principle is the same.


Disagree all you like---this is still the way that English (and every other language---I got this rule from my Latin class!) has worked for hundreds of years: If a direct quotation (i.e. something in quotation marks) is attached as part of a sentence (usually using a comma), the quotation is the object of whatever the verb is, and the verb specifies how the quoted words were conveyed ("said," "declared," "thought," "hummed," etc.), and if the direct quotation isn't made part of another sentence (i.e. period, capital letter) the speech action is implied. That's just the way English works. Like all rules of grammar, if you have a good reason and you know what you're doing you can set it aside, but that's not the same thing as there not being a reason to not set it aside.


[url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma]Explanation on Wikipedia[/url], or: "The red, white, and blue flag" vs "The red, white and blue flag."


e.e. cummings (note the capitalization) consistently didn't capitalize his name or any personal pronoun referring to himself, and had a ... unique ... but, from what my dad (who studied him in far more depth than I) says, consistent style of punctuation. But he clearly knew what he was doing, and his poetry was usually about something, yet might well have been dismissed if he didn't make himself stand out using his then-unique style.

That's content---a separate issue

The point I've increasingly belabored above (here, and in previous posts) is that "I feel like doing it that way" or "I like the way that looks" isn't sufficient reason to flout long-established convention.


Agreed ... but the "best" in "works best" should refer to conveying the meaning you intend to the reader, so obsolete words are rarely "best."


Precisely.

*likes Andrew Pudua *

You guys have some seriously deep thoughts going back and forth. I'm loving reading it all.

Same here.

This is such an helpful thread! I haven't had time to read it all through yet, but I've been wondering about this for a while now; I just searched dialogue and found this gem of a thread. So I am going to carefully read all of it as soon as I have time! It looks like the answer to all the questions about dialogue tags that have been whizzing around my head.

* mouth quirks * Or maybe you'll just end up with more questions. * wry * * grins *

*Laughs* I hope not!!

I generally don't use dialogue tags, except when the reader could become confused about who is speaking. Generally dialogue tags aren't needed, because a quotation mark usually implies that someone is talking. (That is, in my experience, usually the point of having quotation marks. )

Somebody mentioned italics at some point, so I thought I'd also mention that I never italicize a character's thoughts (and I find it annoying when authors do so). Some people find that thoughts can then be confused with narrative, but I feel that if you are ever confused, that is probably the author's fault, and that there are convincing arguments to be made that a character's thoughts are part of the narration (especially in the third-person-omniscient).

If anybody wants to read a book written in that style, I recommend The Killer Angels, which is an excellent book anyway and exemplary of good grammar and usage in narration.

(I also use the Oxford common, by the by, because it's less confusing and arguably a more consistent way of looking at English linguistics.)

Mainly, though, I just find it fascinating (and humorous, from a linguistic perspective) that you all are actually debating about this. The irony about grammar is that "conventions" are really just a native speaker's perceptions of how his language is "supposed" to work and what he was taught in English class, and often a linguist would describe the language very differently than its speaker would.

Technically, you all are not, so far as I know (I dabble in linguistics), actually debating a "grammar" issue. Grammar is morphology (which this clearly is not) and syntax (which doesn't stipulate the correct usage of words, only their positions and influence on each other).

It's also clearly not a semantic (what a word means) issue.

This is really pragmatic (linguistic sense) issue. Pragmatics include style, conventions, and even body language. Pragmatics are all about making your meaning and intentions clear.

And, incidentally, pragmatics have no actual rules. They are entirely subject to the perceptions and preconceptions (conventions) of the native speakers.

Basically, you all are arguing about whose assumptions about English are more reasonable, not about how English actually works.

*loves the e.e. cummings mention*

By the way, intentionally breaking conventions and rules to make a point (a la cummings) is different than doing it because you don't know any better. When it comes to proper English, just like the law, "ignorance is no excuse".

(I just realized that I put my punctuation after my quotation mark...I think I read too much British literature. There's a debate on that too, by the way.)

A character's perceptions are indeed part of the narration if we are "in that character's head." But authors often want to give us a direct quotation, as it were, of the character's thoughts---and in my experience italics are the standard way of denoting that. A related issue that comes up in fantasy and science fiction is when conversations take place through telepathy, body language, or some such: since (as I've argued before and I think I said above) quotation marks generally denote something being said aloud, they are far less ideal for punctuating and delimiting such "speech" than italics, which is (again) in my experience the standard way of doing so. (Excerpts from letters too brief to denote by changes in indentation, interpretation of gestures, and the like, which come up even in "general" fiction, also fall under the same umbrella, and in my experience also almost always use italics.)


Actually, several of the topics we've covered in this thread---you commented on italics versus quotation marks, and there was also the issue of connecting a quotation (piece of dialogue) to the following action using a comma instead of ending it with a period---are syntactic ones, since they've dealt a great deal with punctuation.


Is "semantics" just "what a word means"? If it isn't clear who said a piece of dialogue, that question could arguably fall under "the meaning of words."


That's an ... odd ... statement; as we've discussed at length in this thread, there is room for style, and there are conventions of varying strictness, in syntax.


Since the English language is, among other things, a set of conventions ("this set of squiggles represents that thingy over there") for communicating with each other, with generations past, and with generations to come, that's a distinction without a difference, if it's even a distinction at all.


As I said.

I said something about this earlier in the thread (earlier than the "topic review" in the reply-editing screen goes), but I recently saw a blog post (about video criticism, but that's not relevant) that reminded me: It's all about trust. If we can trust that you know what you're doing, you can "bend the rules" of grammar or syntax or usage for some purpose. But there's also another aspect: Using the English language "correctly" helps build the reader's trust in the author in other areas, such as worldbuilding and story construction. (For example, I sometimes read fan fiction,but if a story's "summary" has three or more misspelled words or other egregious errors, I treat that as a sign that the story will likely be of similar quality and so skip it.)