(More) dialogue punctuation questions

[Hex]

Mmm. My problem is that she's pausing in the middle of the sentence and that's how I'd experience it.

So if it was me, I'd say: "Certainly" and then I'd get stuck and realise I couldn't bring myself to say 'sir'. That'd be my experience and I wanted that to come over to the reader.

The example of explaining why she's about to pause before she starts to speak (which I think was Cul's??) was much more elegant, but I was going for staggering awkwardness rather than elegance because before she gets stuck, she doesn't know it's going to happen.

 

[hopewrites]

I think that's where the art end of writing comes in. you want to get across the right feel, so you use different techniques in different places to achieve it. I wasnt saying she should pause before "certainly" because as you say, she doesnt know until its out of her mouth that she is going to struggle.
re the stuttering suggestion: not everyone stutters to trip over something they cant say. most people just have a big pause where their face is working (think rapped succession of emotion, or articulation without sound) but their is no accompanying sound until they can work through what needs to come out of their mouth next, so I like the pause. and I like that it is done with an action break, because it fills us in on what is going on between the words, and in this case the words are far enough apart for it.
To argue with myself (because i'm like that) some people internalize even that unvocalized struggle so there is only blank face and voiceless pause while the person processes.
where I would mess this passage up is trying to explain all of that while running the dialog...

 

[HareBrain]

ok correct me if i'm wrong but since you are telling us how she is not saying the word, isnt that a speach tag? because they tell us what the emotive quality we are missing by not actually hearing the dialog is.
She muttered bashfully. "That's how I understand them anyway."

My understanding is that a dialogue tag is part of the same sentence.

In this example:

"I'll see you in hell," she muttered.

She muttered, is the tag.

In this example:

"I'll see you in hell." She made sure she kept her voice low.

There is no tag. The following sentence describes the dialogue, but is not a tag because it isn't part of the same sentence. You might call it an attributing action or a "stage direction".

also somewhere (that I didnt multiquote so I could have it pages later) there was an example where the tag went before the dialog, or I wanted it to, and I liked that because the example showed how the speech pattern was abnormal for the speaker. So if I'm used to someone having a decisive voice, and suddenly they are unsure of themselves I'm going to want to know that before I read the unsure dialog or I would have to trace back to 'hear' it correctly.

That's a valid concern, if you can't make the words themselves reflect how they're being in said. If a normally timid person were to say "I'll have you all hanged, by God!" it's unlikely you'd need to point out they were speaking without their usual character.

But if there are only a few words before the character-changing information, it might not be necessary to have the tag/action before. Most people read several words at once, and so would "process" the speech tag along with the dialogue. Even if not, it's no trouble to re-read two or three words. If there are more than a very few words, then yes, I think it's a good idea to indicate the out-of-characterness up front.

I'm not sure if there was actually any point to this post. But then, I'm trying to avoid doing the washing up.

 

[Ursa major]

Sorry to keep banging on about this, Hex, but if you're describing that your PoV character is having trouble saying a specific word (in this case, sir), that word should really be in the sentence of narrative, not merely left to the following dialogue. I can see why you wouldn't want to do this: ending one sentence and beginning the next with the same word doesn't look right either, even though it would be grammatically correct.


So the issue is, if you want her to finally utter the word, the reader should be told that she has, while at the same time, you want your narrative to be grammatically correct. One way of achieving this is to do what we often do with speech, which is to describe what's being said, but not necessarily as straight dialogue. So you could write:

"Certainly..." The pause lengthened until I finally managed to utter the word, sir. "How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"

 

[Hex]

Maybe she should just call him 'sir'.

I can't believe she's being so awkward about it all.

 

[Ursa major]

You have to be true to your characters.

 

[HareBrain]

Sorry to keep banging on about this, Hex, but if you're describing that your PoV character is having trouble saying a specific word (in this case, sir), that word should really be in the sentence of narrative, not merely left to the following dialogue. I can see why you wouldn't want to do this: ending one sentence and beginning the next with the same word doesn't look right either, even though it would be grammatically correct.

I see UM's point now. So this:

The pause lengthened as I struggled to say the word: "Sir."

is not correct, even though this is:

The pause lengthened as I struggled to say: "Sir."

It's "the word" which is the problem?

 

[Ursa major]

That could be a solution, HB, although I wonder whether it would still work when the rest of the PoV's dialogue is added:

"Certainly..." The pause lengthened as I struggled to say: "Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"




I really dislike the use of a colon to introduce dialogue, but I seem to have been tricked into seeing an example of where it works (in HB's post, not this one) better than a comma.

* shakes fist at HB *

 

[Hex]

This conversation is taking place far, far above my head. Obviously.

So. Um. Why is one correct and the other not? Is this another of those times when we take the quotation marks away and are left with a garbled nonsense?

 

[Ursa major]

There is a sentence hanging in the air, where the PoV character is telling the readers something, that is:

The pause lengthened as I struggled to say the word, sir.
​

It is a complete thought in itself. It could be written as HB has suggested:

The pause lengthened as I struggled to say the word: "Sir."
​

I still prefer the first of these two.


If, however, one writes:

"Certainly..." The pause lengthened as I struggled to say: "Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

it gives the impression that the PoV character is struggling to say:

"Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

Now this may not be that important in terms of grammar, but it may cause some readers to pause briefly, which is not really what you want them to do.


Returning to the original:

"Certainly..." The pause lengthened as I struggled to say the word: "Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

we see a similar problem, as the remaining dialogue is, rather obviously, more than just the one word. Again, it may cause the reader to pause.

 

[HareBrain]

Aargh, looks like I misunderstood Ursa's objection after all.

Onto his actual point:

If, however, one writes:

"Certainly..." The pause lengthened as I struggled to say: "Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

it gives the impression that the PoV character is struggling to say:

"Sir. How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

I would say that's unlikely, because "word" is singular. But I agree that it might give some readers momentary pause, so it's perhaps not as ideal as I originally thought.

One solution would be to include another "stage direction" between "Sir" and "How many glasses". But to find one that was relevant and very short would be tricky.

Anyway, we've got this thread well beyond a hundred posts between us, and that's the main thing.

 

[Ursa major]

Anyway, we've got this thread well beyond a hundred posts between us, and that's the main thing.

And continuing the work:

I would say that's unlikely, because "word" is singular. But I agree that it might give some readers momentary pause, so it's perhaps not as ideal as I originally thought.

Which would be true if the example you were quoting happened to contain the word, word. It doesn't.

This does highlight a completely different problem: when we're editing, we tend to know what we meant to write, or what used to be in the text we're currently editing, so we sometimes mentally add words that aren't actually there in front of our eyes.




PS. Waterstones? WATERSTONES? What have they done with the apostrophe?!!!

 

[HareBrain]

Which would be true if the example you were quoting happened to contain the word, word. It doesn't.

Oh, but -- but you quoted the version with "word" later in your post, so I thought -- but -- oh, I bet you did that deliberately!

And the shop probably couldn't decide what the "modern" placing of the apostrophe would be.

Waterstone's
Waterstones'
Water'stones
Waters'tones

Etc. So confusing.

 

[The Judge]

... if you're describing that your PoV character is having trouble saying a specific word (in this case, sir), that word should really be in the sentence of narrative

On re-reading this bit of Ursa's I was about to argue against the "should really" when it occurred to me we may be assuming different things about the story from that sentence.

I see it that she's having to wait on a guy she knows and, possibly, loathes (?an ex-lover?) so we know that she is going to have problems being respectful. We've seen her greet other patrons with "Certainly, sir" or its equivalent, and we know that it will stick in her craw to treat him the same way. That being the case, although it's certainly helpful if it's in the narrative, as in

The pause lengthened as I struggled to say the word, sir.

I don't see it as mandatory. In writing we omit words all the time which are effectively taken as read -- we know what "the word" is so we don't need it explained/written down.

Clearly, though, if we've no idea, and this has come out of the blue then, yes, the "sir" needs to be in the narrative sentence for it to make sense to us. Though one other thing occurs to me, which is the need for inverted commas around it, even in narrative, as a way of highlighting it (as I've done in the previous sentence). That is then going to be confusing...

Can't she tell him to fetch his own %&^$£%^ wine?!


Re Waterstone's/Waterstones -- apparently Daunt thinks that without the apostrophe it's easier for use in emails etc -- though it's surely not beyond the wit of someone to ensure that they have email addresses using both, so as to catch the illiterate or mistyped mails

 

[Ursa major]

On re-reading this bit of Ursa's I was about to argue against the "should really" when it occurred to me we may be assuming different things about the story from that sentence.

I see it that she's having to wait on a guy she knows and, possibly, loathes (?an ex-lover?) so we know that she is going to have problems being respectful. We've seen her greet other patrons with "Certainly, sir" or its equivalent, and we know that it will stick in her craw to treat him the same way. That being the case, although it's certainly helpful if it's in the narrative, as in I don't see it as mandatory. In writing we omit words all the time which are effectively taken as read -- we know what "the word" is so we don't need it explained/written down.

Clearly, though, if we've no idea, and this has come out of the blue then, yes, the "sir" needs to be in the narrative sentence for it to make sense to us. Though one other thing occurs to me, which is the need for inverted commas around it, even in narrative, as a way of highlighting it (as I've done in the previous sentence). That is then going to be confusing...

The word, word, was in the original** example; I was merely pointing that the text that followed it didn't flow from that point as smoothly as it could. If, as you suggest, the narrator has been saying "sir" to all and sundry, and the reader has been made aware of it, you may be right that its absence would be obvious on the one occasion when the narrator cannot say it out loud.



** - I think we'd all, save for Hex, have long since forgotten this example, if the word, word, had been anywhere in the sentence other than the end, as in, for example:

"Certainly..." The word, sir, caught in her throat and only emerged after a struggle. "How many glasses? Where shall I bring it?"
​

Apart from anything, the narrator is having trouble completing the sentence of dialogue that lies in front of her sentence of narration, not the one immediately following.

 

[Hex]

My head hurts.

She hasn't been saying 'sir' to other people. She hasn't said 'sir' in the whole book, so I can't claim context to get away with it.

I may have to use 'honorific' after all.

I shall take comfort from the fact that this is very close to the end of the story and if the agent/ publisher/ reader hasn't already flung the manuscript across the room in horror at all the sentence fragments/ comma splices/ random scattering of colons, this probably won't make them do so.

Probably.

Unless we're talking straws and camels, of course.