Imagine if you
can, an editor's amazement at taking up a submitted manuscript in which
the dialogue is poorly punctuated. Pretend, if you will for half a minute,
that you are that editor (or agent, or publisher). You have a stack of
manuscripts to get through tonight, you are always looking for ways to
lighten your reading load, and here's someone who is so stupid, or so little
read, or so indifferent to your plight (so many manuscripts, and only so
much life), that they don't know enough to take the trouble to get it right.
Tell me, dear
editor-for-the-nonce, what do you do?
[ ] correct one page of it to give them a model, and
then read away
[ ] correct the whole thing, and include some fairly detailed
margin notes on why it's this way & not that
[ ] immediately put it in the pile that's going to the slush-pile
reader in the morning: let them deal with it
[ ] just read through it, making allowances: after all, you
know what they meant
[ ] experience a tiny up-tick in your general mood as you matter-of-factly
place the ms. in the reject pile:
one less to read tonight.
(Hint: it's not among the first four choices above.)
English teachers, however, don't quite have this luxury. They feel responsible in some way for what students put on a page. They are teaching them after all, and they don't want the name of their institution to become synonymous with Engfish or gobbledy gooseshit or sheer ignorance. They'll take the time, or suggest the Workshop, or give you a hand out (or send you to a webpage).
So what's the matter with editors? Why aren't they as loving as mom or your English prof?
Because
when a 'writer' demonstrates that he or she doesn't know how to punctuate,
then that writer comes off as something less than a writer, and will impress
almost any editor or contest judge as not only ignorant but also foolish.
WHY, asks this
experienced reader, would a writer willfully create biases in his reader
that his story many never overcome? Why break the bubble? Why disrupt "the
vivid and continuous dream"? This person surely (thinks the experienced
reader), albeit unconsciously, wants to be rejected. I'll oblige.
And here's the basic rationale: if the writer doesn't know the conventions
on the page, then she probably hasn't spent much time looking at published
pages; so what kind of a writer is she? Or he? A flash in the pan, obviously.
This story may be wild and interesting, but can we expect more of the same
if it comes from the pen of one who never reads? We prefer to build a stock
of writers, rather than reward one monkey with a typewriter, one time.
{Think about this
from the magazine's point of view: you'd like to be the first to publish
someone who eventually becomes famous. You discovered them, back then.
Build that reputation, and you've made yourself immensely attractive both
to readers and submitting writers. Almost all of Story Magazine's
advertising, before they quit in a snit, was about who they discovered,
and it was impresseive. So for editors and magazines and journals and such,it's
as much a business decision as it is an aesthetic one.}
So, if you're going to
ask someone to look at your work, grow up? Maybe better to say, pay
them the courtesy of giving them copy free of broken code, so they have
the smoothest possible read.
[Kevin art here. Something to do
with Fritz and 14's and such.]
Here's a silly story then (silly so you can keep your eye on the punctuation), that contains every twist and turn in dialogue that I could think of, plus a lot of bonus practice in possessives and contractions and so on. There are no mistakes. You should be able to find the answer to your dialogue punctuation question herein:
A
PUNCTUATED STORY, WITH LOTS OF DIALOGUE,
AND A MORAL
"What is particularly irritating to an editor,"
said Gloria, beginning
a new paragraph for every change in speaker as is customary, "is
for 'writers'
not to know how to punctuate dialogue."
"Oh?" said Susan. "And what sort of mistakes
do they make?"
"Probably everyone--I mean every one--in
the book, and then some,"
5
interjected Fritz. (Fritz knew one needs to keep one's ones straight.)
"Shut up, Fritz! You're just a cat. So
you can't participate in dialogue
at all." (Susan was a little miffed at Fritz for chewing up her
muff.)
Mmmmm, said Fritz to himself. Maybe I can't
use speech, but I sure
can punctuate--commas and dashes (a dash = two hyphens with no space
on
10
either side) and dachsunds and semiconductors, fercrissakes. I mean
semiCOLONS; I use 'em only between complete sentences. Right, Gloria?
And Gloria could read him by just his expression.
"Right, Fritz," she
said, "they're a weak period, which is what you remind me of."
Fritz hissed, and extended the claws of
one paw. But he didn't think out loud
any more, for the reader; he kept his thoughts entirely to
himself from that moment
on.
18
"Ok, ok, so you punctuate like an angel.
But you're still just a cat, my friend. Nice
kitty kitty...yes'ums, you're 'the kitty of the week,'" she murmured,
yawning a little and scratching
20
between his ears. But his fur was so silky, the weight of his body
rubbing against her leg was so just-the-right-weight. His whiskers so comma-like,
his eyes they were colons, his tail like a "!" or a "?",
or when the children got to it, more like a "&". (And
his sandpapery tongue!)
"So where do you put the period?"
asked Susan. "Inside the quotation marks or outside?"
Gloria was glad Susan's muff was ruined.
The questions Susan would ask! Sometimes Gloria
25
wanted to sock her in the mouth, especially just before third period
Math class. But the trick about
the inverted commas and the period was--as Gloria knew and Fritz,
too, though as we said, he
wasn't talking any more--you actually went with the aesthetic of
the thing. Some of the time. ... Sort
of. ... Hell, maybe she didn't know!
"I think you're right for once, Glory-bee,
sweetie-pea: you don't know. And you don't either,
30
Mr. Pussy Cat."
WHACKO! right in the kisser. Fritz sprang
from her lap. Gloria clutched her torn knuckles, while
Susan, no longer miffed about her muff, cried out, "Omphf! Oh, dear,
now I won't be able to go to Maff class!"
"Yes, you will, too, Susan!" Gloria assured
her.
"How," said Susan sternly, "can I possibly
go," she sniffed, "to Maff," snif sniff, "wifout my teef?!"
35
"Because we're doing the fourteens today,"
said Gloria.
"Oh, fanks. Fat's a relief, Glore," smiling
a gaping smile and bleeding a little on the floor, which Fritz
inspected, and because of which, staring at it intently, Gloria
began to doubt herself all over again, because
anyone that felt confident about her fourteens couldn't be totally
stupid.
40
Some Rules of Thumb
* Notice that I made a new paragraph not just
for every change of speaker, but for any shift in point of view, as at
line # 18 above. This is not a rule, but I notice a lot of writers do it.
Sort of as if each speaker, and finally each consciousness, has his or
her (or its) own little island to work from. But the rule is, for every
time you change to a new speaker, you indent for a new paragraph.
* It really is a matter of aesthetics, to put everything inside the quotation marks:
* Notice that thought is no longer expressed as direct quotation. He thought it would look too loud if he put quotes around it. It will look loud and spit-ful, he thought, if I put quotes around it. This has been the dominant convention for the past half century. See Fritz above, on line 9.
* The double quotation, when you're putting quote marks around something that's also got quote marks, like a title, uses single quotes for the inner quotation and double quotes for the outer, like "...'kitty of the week,'" she murmured, back on line 20.
* One spot where most novices lose their nerve is when the quotation is interrupted by the tag, but then gets picked up again; so you have the tag in the middle of the quote. Looks like: "What is particularly annoying for an editor," said Gloria, "is for someone who pretends to be a writer not to know how to punctuate dialogue." [See lines 1 and 2, at top.]
* Just train your eye for that little a in
asked, when it comes after a final-looking question mark:
"Right, Fritz," she said. And....
"Right, Fritz?" she asked. "Is that right?" asked Gloria.
[line 24]
Same thing for exclamation points:
"Yes, you will!" she assured her.
[line 34]
These look funny until you
get used to them, or just remember, that like the comma, all that's happening
here is a convention for making indirect discourse-- She said that I don't
care -- making it direct: She said, "You don't care."
* When it comes to dramatizing
your scenes, by the way, nothing is more direct than direct discourse:
Indirect discourse:
They wondered why she was so late. She'd told them earlier that she'd be
there at eight.
Jim said that she might have meant a.m., eight a.m., instead of that evening.
Borris said Jim was
nuts, and wished he'd shut up.
===>
"Why is she so late?" they all asked. "She said she'd be here at eight!"
"Maybe she meant eight a.m.," said Jim.
"Jim, spare us." Borris spat and wiped his mouth with his bandana.
Which one is more dramatic, feels more like the characters are on
the stage in front of you, moving around and talking to each other?
A no-brainer, right? But, how many beginners
actually avoid using dialogue because they're not sure how
to punctuate it? More than I care to tell you.
Art by fraidy-cats...dudn't have much to offer.
So, moral is, learn it, and be an ebony Fritz!
Not a moldy merkin.