Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Yet another formatting question

This is topic Yet another formatting question in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by wrenbird (Member # 3245) on :

Am I supposed to indent for dialogue?

Which one is correct:

A
Judy walked down the street. She saw Joey.
----->"Hi, Joey," she said.
B
Judy walked down the street. She saw Joey.
"Hi, Joey," she said.

Note from Kathleen: Edited to show what she was asking.

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 24, 2008).]

Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :

Dialogue is in paragraph case. Tabbed indents are ignored in html source code, so they don't format on web pages in paragraph case.

[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited June 24, 2008).]

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

You treat a paragraph with dialogue like any other paragraph. It would be indented if it's a new paragraph.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Every time there's a new speaker, you start a new paragraph. And, as JeanneT said, every new paragraph needs to be indented.

In the examples you show above, wrenbird, you don't need to start a new paragraph unless someone other than Judy (the person referred to in the first two sentences) is the speaker. The dialogue should go with the person speaking it.

Any other indenting is not correct in standard prose.

Posted by wrenbird (Member # 3245) on :

So, like this:

---->On a sunny day in May, Judy was walking down the street. She saw Joey coming towards her.
"Hi, Joey," she said.
---->"Hi, Judy," Joey said.
---->"What are you doing today?" Judy asked.
---->Joey shrugged. "Oh, nothing."

What about that last part, where I have words before the dialogue?

Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :

quote:
¶On a sunny day in May, Judy was walking down the street. She saw Joey coming towards her.
"Hi, Joey," she said.
¶"Hi, Judy," Joey said.
¶"What are you doing today?" Judy asked.
¶Joey shrugged. "Oh, nothing."

A paragraph break for the last line is correct because Joey is a different character from Judy, different actor, action, and speaker. I'm fond of the pilcrow symbol to denote paragraph breaks. "Joey shrugged" in the last line is a gestural dialogue tag, what some writers call a beat. I prefer to place those within the dialogue whenever possible rather than before. "Oh" is a discourse marker. Setting discourse markers off from the main sentence with gestural dialogue tags might strenghten the meaning of the emotion intended and more closely represent the sequence of actions. ["Oh." Joey shrugged. "Nothing."]

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

My preference would be for this:

¶On a sunny day in May, Judy was walking down the street. She saw Joey coming towards her.
¶"Hi, Joey," she said.

I prefer that because there is a reference to Joey coming toward her in the narrative. I prefer not to see action by a second character in a paragraph with dialogue. If there is, it's better to use a new paragraph.

I don't agree on putting the Oh before the shrug, but that's a stylistic issue. I think it reads more smoothly with the shrug first. Either would be correct. It's just a matter of personal style.

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited June 25, 2008).]

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

> I don't agree on putting the Oh before the shrug, but that's
> a stylistic issue. I think it reads more smoothly with the
> shrug first. Either would be correct. It's just a matter of
> personal style.

It's only partly a stylistic issue. Putting "Oh" before the shrug implies he said "Oh" before shrugging.

Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :

Well it's not true anyway. It should be:

---->"Oh, just shrugging," Joey said.

;-)
Pat

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I've been told it's possible to put paragraph indentation into HTML, but I don't have a clue as to how it's done. (I wish I did know. I could use it.)

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

You can indent a whole section with the <blockquote> </blockquote> tags, but I haven't seen how to indent for paragraphs, except with (which gives a blank space in html, so if you want more than one blank space, you have to use a series of them).

Edited to add that it gave a blank space here, too, so I'm going to post it with spaces in between the symbols. If you want it to insert a blank space, you have to move them all next to each other.

& n b s p ;

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 26, 2008).]

Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :

I believe html is turned off in this forum. UBB codes are on though. The <p> tag in HTML doesn't appear to be supported in UBB, at least the version running on this forum. HTML character entities are allowed and supported though. w3schools has an extensive list of ISO 8859-1 symbol entities and character entities http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp. Many are supported in most browsers. The character entity for the small e acute accent as in cliché is é. A wider indent or space character entity than the nonbreaking space one is the emspace &emsp;. One begins this paragraph.

I have a clip file of the character entities I use most often so I don't have to visit w3schools to look them up.

[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited June 26, 2008).]

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

quote:
It's only partly a stylistic issue. Putting "Oh" before the shrug implies he said "Oh" before shrugging.

Actually that's not quite correct. The shrugging would indicate simultaneous action.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

But extrinsic expressed a preference for

["Oh." Joey shrugged. "Nothing."]

so it was "shrugged" not "shrugging."

And the period after "shrugged" makes it an action tag, not a saidism (replacement word for "said").

Posted by JeanneT (Member # 5709) on :

As usual, the inimitable Kathleen is correct.

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited June 28, 2008).]