Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Tox:
We run into this all the time, particularly with older writers--many of today's newer authors don't even know the convention, but yes: if a person is having a moment of soliloquy, and going on and on with a long, multi-paragraph speech, the convention is, opening quotes on all the paragraphs, but closing quotes only on the last. And yes, it's a major pain in the tuchus, as you CANNOT know unless you read it.
I don't actually see any good way to automated-ly identify "run on dialogue" from "missing closing quotes.' When I've used your ePUBTools to help me clean something up, usually a bad scan we'll receive, I just muddle through by saying "no" on those paras that should NOT have a closing quote. NBD, FWIW. To my way of thinking, given how handy the tool is generally, it's a small price to pay.
Hitch
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Could there not be a "Continued Speech" button when the 'missing' closing quote is detected - maybe it would be necessary to insert a closing quote with a marker - eg ”<C> - that, like the <A>, gets removed later on in the process.
I edit a lot of transcripts from TV interview/talking heads programmes and the like, full of the usual suspects - politicians, polemicists, soothsayers, worthy establishment members….
If the interviewer asks "Is it raining?", they respond with a ten-minute rant and rail on climate change, about which of course they know diddlysquat
If you were to put their response into one paragraph it would look like Joyce, but still have the same number of clichés per hundred words (cliché index)
BR