"quote", he said or "quote." He said.

[saoir]

I do have respect for good grammar, so I want to do the right thing. However I am not obsessed with getting every minute detail correct if the average reader doesn't notice or care.

I have been writing a book which is 90% finished now, in Scrivener which is fantastic btw, but I now realise that it has been automatically capitalising every time I end a quote. Such as.....

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit.” Said Frank.

I have done some research and see that the technical English grammar experts are saying I should be writing this as...

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit”, said Frank.

Now that I am reading it though on my 4th draft, I am worried whether this is a major mistake or a terribly minor one. If I have to change them all I have to go back through 65,000 words of dialogue heavy writing

Thoughts anyone ?

[jandrew]

Originally Posted by saoir

Thoughts anyone ?

"I hate to tell you, but you are going to want to fix those," said Andrew.

[Bilbo1967]

I think the latter is correct. That is, not the one you have.

Having said that, as a reader it's not something that would bother me greatly if I was reading it.

[little and large]

I'd say that you need to change all your speech into the way you've discovered. I wouldn't be able to read a book with the style you began with unless it was utterly brilliant.

[little and large]

Originally Posted by jandrew

"I hate to tell you, but you are going to want to fix those," said Andrew.

nicely put

[CWatkinsNash]

You must fix them all before you publish. This is pretty basic stuff, not advanced grammar, and unlike Bilbo, I would not continue reading past the first few times I saw it in a book.

[dickloraine]

I don't know scrivener, but it looks like you enabled it to auto-correct the beginning of sentences, so that each sentence starts with a capital letter. If you did it consequently wrong, there is the possibility that you could fix it with some search and replace. Maybe ask some of the regex experts on this site, but it should be possible to make this automatically. Don't know if scrivener has regex capabilities, but word has them for example. With luck, the grammar test of word would even find the then remaining errors.

[HarryT]

There's no "technical" about it. It's just plain wrong. Didn't it look wrong to you?

[saoir]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

I don't know scrivener, but it looks like you enabled it to auto-correct the beginning of sentences, so that each sentence starts with a capital letter. If you did it consequently wrong, there is the possibility that you could fix it with some search and replace. Maybe ask some of the regex experts on this site, but it should be possible to make this automatically. Don't know if scrivener has regex capabilities, but word has them for example. With luck, the grammar test of word would even find the then remaining errors.

I agree I should have picked up on it early on. I guess a search and replace for ." and replace with ", would work. But the decapitalisation ? It seems that will have to be done manually .... ?

[pdurrant]

Note that punctuation of direct speech also depends on whether you're writing for the US market or not.

The US style is to always put the full stop or comma inside the quotation marks.
The non-US style is to use the logic of the text to decide the placement.

US:
“It is only a theory." said Frank.
“It is," said Frank, "only a theory."

non-US:
“It is only a theory." said Frank.
“It is", said Frank, "only a theory."

Note that the 'said' isn't capitalised just because the direct speech itself is a whole sentence. There's no need to change the full-stop to a comma.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/wo...-direct-speech fives a good summary.

[saoir]

Sorry to be pedantic .. but is everyone agreeing that the second version is 100% correct ?

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit”, said Frank.

I appreciate all of your replies btw.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by saoir

Sorry to be pedantic .. but is everyone agreeing that the second version is 100% correct ?

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit”, said Frank.

I appreciate all of your replies btw.

That one is wrong everywhere if Frank has come to the end of his sentence.

Assuming that Frank has finished his sentence it should be

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit.” said Frank.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That one is wrong everywhere if Frank has come to the end of his sentence.

Assuming that Frank has finished his sentence it should be

“It is only a theory sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones I admit.” said Frank.

I would personally add in a couple of commas, and replace "It is" with "It's" - "It is" sounds unnatural.

“It's only a theory, sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones, I admit.” said Frank.

[saoir]

Originally Posted by HarryT

“It's only a theory, sir. Maybe one of my crazier ones, I admit.” said Frank.

How come it is a small 's' after a full stop ?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by saoir

How come it is a small 's' after a full stop ?

Because "said Frank" is not a new sentence; it's all part of the same sentence that the quoted speech starts.

If you're unsure about this stuff you NEED to employ the services of an editor. It's always good advice to do so, but if grammar isn't your strong point, it changes from "good advice" to "absolutely essential".