Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I like understanding who's saying what, and when...I've read dialogue that was immaculately quoted and punctuated that I still couldn't make heads or tails out of, no matter how many times I re-read it. Conversely, I've found myself happily reading along for quite some time before I even noticed that there wasn't much in the way of punctuation to denote dialogue.
So I guess the bottom line is: if I don't notice they're not there and the dialogue feels natural and is easy to follow ... I suppose I don't really give a damn if they're there or not. *shrugs*
|
Overall I agree with you. The area I disagree is the lack of dialog indicators-although the indicators don't always make the dialog easy to follow it seems to me that the lack of indicators always makes it hard-at least when there's more than just a very small amount at a time.
The problem I've found is the lack of attention somebody pays to standards. For instance, when the speaker changes it's supposed to start a new paragraph:
"I said this."
"No, you said that."
That appears to limit each speaker to a single paragraph so there's another standard (I think-haven't written professionally for years now and when I did it was technical so very little dialog) that the closing quote is omitted when the speaker continues in a new paragraph. That seems to cause most of the problems-the punctuation makes it seem that the speaker has changed but the content eventually says otherwise.
"I said this.
"And another thing, I said that."
"No, you didn't say that."
"But I did say this."
Above makes it clear speaker 1 is claiming to say both this & that, speaker 2 is contradicting speaker 1 and then speaker 1 is correcting (him)self.
"I said this."
"And another thing, I said that."
"No, you didn't say that."
"But I did say this."
Above looks as if speaker 1 is claiming to say this, speaker 2 is claiming to say that, speaker 1 is contradicting speaker 2 & speaker 2 is then contradicting (him)self.
Omitting dialog indicators is at least as confusing as using them improperly, IMO.
Better yet (IMO) would be if authors explicitly state who's saying what.
"I said this.
"And another thing, I said that," said speaker 1.
"No, you didn't say that," said speaker 2.
"But I did say this," said speaker 1.
Sometimes cumbersome but very, very clear who says what.