What else is new, a grammatical detail is causing my head to spin. LOL
Here's the situation. I am writing a line of dialogue. It looks like this:
"Marketing. You know; Images, likenesses, holos, the usual."
The character is responding to a question from another character, and speaking in stacatto or is it staccato because he's a salesman and this is how he sounds.
I just need to know - how would you punctuate that line? Semicolons after each list item? A colon after You know: ? Something else entirely?
Thanks in advance. Don't know why things like this hang me up but they do.
Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :
A comma would work fine. A colon might be more appropriate than a semi colon since you're detailing a list.
Posted by Gardener (Member # 7948) on :
It he's pausing between words, you could use ellipses. If you want more than a comma, use a dash.
Posted by PaulUK (Member # 7906) on :
If you want to be absolutely grammatically correct, it's a colon, because what follows is a list, and each item should be separated by a comma (you'd use a semi-colon to separate more complicated items in a list. You know: images of people and places; likenesses, of people, animals, places, stuff like that; holos, whatever they might be; the usual, like you said.).
However, because it's dialogue, and thus informal, I'd personally use an em dash (but as annepin points out, a comma would be fine also).
Paul
Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :
Erm... except an em dash has some parenthetical qualities... I dunno, can't quite voice it but I don't think an em dash is right.
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
I would do it as follows--don't know why grammatically--just feels right.
"Marketing. You know, images, likenesses, holos--the usual."
or possibly
"Marketing. You know--images, likenesses, holos--the usual."
Although I prefer the first one.
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited May 19, 2008).]
Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :
Yeah, I like skadder's first one.
Posted by Wolfe_boy (Member # 5456) on :
I'm with skadder on this one. If you really want to strengthen the rhythm of a staccato speaker in your reader's head, use the word staccato in the dialogue attribution, though only if he wouldn't normally speak in such a way. And again, only if you feel that the nature of how this dialogue is being spoken isn't being strongly enough conveyed by a series of commas, and only if the fact that the dialogue is staccato is of the utmost importance. I generally disagree with using colons and semi colons in speech, since a writer would only use them to denote some specific rhythm to a spoken line of dialogue that they feel the reader must read with the exact intonation. I got into a minor disagreement on here with someone who was doing that exact thing, using colons as a three-beat pause, semi-colons as a two-beat pause, and commas as a one-beat pause. Or something like that - it was a long time ago.
Jayson Merryfield
Posted by PaulUK (Member # 7906) on :
quote:Erm... except an em dash has some parenthetical qualities... I dunno, can't quite voice it but I don't think an em dash is right.
"...it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (or "period") is too strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used in lists or definitions, but that is a style guide issue; a colon is often recommended for use instead."
from that world-famous style guide Wikipedia
Kind regards,
Paul
Posted by Unwritten (Member # 7960) on :
Have you read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"? I just finished it, and it made me laugh so hard that my kids forced me to read the best parts of it to them. It made me feel like a great mom--reading a book about punctuation to my kids. They're going to grow up to be literary geniuses!
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
