How annoying is the lack of quotation marks to you?

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

On a semi-related subject...
How do people manage to keep up with dialogue in audiobooks, or when they use TTS (or the simple act of having a story read to them) without any audible (or visual) indication of where quoted material starts/stops?

A good narrator makes clear who is speaking by differences in voice and inflection, and there are great narrators. TTS doesn't work so well for this purpose.

[DiapDealer]

Yes, but I'm imagining TTS users still manage, don't they? What I'm getting at is that I don't think quotation marks are as important for comprehension as some make it seem. Instantaneous comprension at a glance?... certainly. No question. And if you (rhetorical) think of the text as nothing more than a delivery mechanism for narrative, then I can perfectly understand how you might find a lack of traditional dialogue indicators annoying -- or even a roadblock to your objective.

I had more, but I think "I understand" is always a good stopping point.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

In comic books, they have recently begun using color-coded boxes to indicate who is speaking when the characters are not on the page (such as during flashbacks) and when showing a character's thoughts. It is much less confusing than using traditional thought balloons all over the page since you can put the text box in the corner of the panel and the colors make it clear who is speaking/thinking.

I am unfamiliar with new-ish comic books, but I have a vague memory of my old Superman comics using a thumbnail image of Supe in a box at the top of the panel with the text when he's supposed to be remembering or telling backstory and dialog that are illustrated in the panel.

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yes, but I'm imagining TTS users still manage, don't they?

TTS is like eating unflavored porridge made with water, three times a day, seven days a week, thirty days a month, sitting in a spartanically furnished room and staring outside a window that faces a gray wall. Swallow some vitamin pills and minerals, and you can probably exist. But will you live?

TTS is the unflavored porridge, the unfurnished rooms and the gray walls of storytelling.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Mivo

TTS is like eating unflavored porridge made with water, three times a day, seven days a week, thirty days a month, sitting in a spartanically furnished room and staring outside a window that faces a gray wall. Swallow some vitamin pills and minerals, and you can probably exist. But will you live?

TTS is the unflavored porridge, the unfurnished rooms and the gray walls of storytelling.

I tend to agree, although their are many sighted people who don't mind TTS.

With me, it is not that I can't understand it, or that the story is made dull or bland, it is the voices I hate. Even the more human sounding ones.

Still if I couldn't read, and could not get good audiobooks or enough good audiobooks, I might learn to deal with it.

Helen

[gmw]

There is TTS and there is TTS. Voices and software make a difference - a big difference. It seems unlikely it will ever get good enough to replace a real person reading the material, and it's not something you would probably choose when other alternatives are available, but it's not all Microsoft Anna reading technical specifications.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by gmw

There is TTS and there is TTS. Voices and software make a difference - a big difference. It seems unlikely it will ever get good enough to replace a real person reading the material, and it's not something you would probably choose when other alternatives are available, but it's not all Microsoft Anna reading technical specifications.

I've tried quite a few because my mother has slight macular degeneration. I agree that there are some slightly better than others, but none I would inflict on her. I'd literally never hear the end of it

I will, if it becomes necessary, get her audio books, and even then there will be a bit of wailing and moaning going on

It is a work in progress and will become better one of these days, about the time we get a holodeck probably.

If you can recommend a good one though I would check it out.

Helen

[gmw]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

[...]It is a work in progress and will become better one of these days, about the time we get a holodeck probably.

If you can recommend a good one though I would check it out.

I don't know if this will help (it's Windows/PC software, not ereader software), but I've been using TextAloud to assist with my writing. The software itself is a bit ugly, but I chose it because of the wide selection of voices and because I can define pronunciations - which helps to stop me cringing every time it gets one of my character's names wrong. I found that it made a very big difference just being able to choose a voice that didn't grate on my nerves.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I am unfamiliar with new-ish comic books, but I have a vague memory of my old Superman comics using a thumbnail image of Supe in a box at the top of the panel with the text when he's supposed to be remembering or telling backstory and dialog that are illustrated in the panel.

I faintly remember that kind of technique used in some old comics, but it was rare. The modern color-coded boxes (using text/background colors associated with each character) method works very well, especially when many characters are conversing at the same time. Despite the number of characters who are conversing, the color coding makes it clear who is speaking.

[MeSue]

I just bailed on another book where quotation marks were omitted--The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. It was also written in a very disjointed, grammatically incorrect "diary" style, which I might have been able to forgive if the storyteller was not supposed to have been a writer in his previous life. Anyway, I might come back to this one as an audiobook, but the style was too distracting for me to read.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MeSue

It was also written in a very disjointed, grammatically incorrect "diary" style, which I might have been able to forgive if the storyteller was not supposed to have been a writer in his previous life.

... and who may or may not have suffered brain-damage from the high fever he sustained while surviving the flu-like epidemic that nearly wiped out humanity.

Just sayin'

[MeSue]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

... and who may or may not have suffered brain-damage from the high fever he sustained while surviving the flu-like epidemic that nearly wiped out humanity.

Just sayin'

Touché. 😊 So did you finish it? Worth revisiting?

Incidentally, I went from that to Flowers for Algernon which also starts out written with terrible spelling and grammar. Somehow that didn't bother me. Maybe because I guessed it would get better as the book progressed.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MeSue

Touché. So did you finish it? Worth revisiting?

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I wasn't really blown away or anything. Funny thing is: I remember the punctuation being pretty sparse in general, but I don't think I really noticed there weren't any quotation marks. I had to go back and check when you mentioned it. But in that book's defense, there wasn't much of the narrative that took place outside of Hig's par-boiled brain anyway--much of it was a running monologue with himself. So even if Heller had decided to use traditional quotation marks, there still probably wouldn't have been a hell of a lot of them.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by MeSue

Touché. �� So did you finish it? Worth revisiting?

Incidentally, I went from that to Flowers for Algernon which also starts out written with terrible spelling and grammar. Somehow that didn't bother me. Maybe because I guessed it would get better as the book progressed.

This sort of thing wouldn't/doesn't bother me at all. There's a reason for it; it's not a literary affectation.

[RHWright]

Originally Posted by WashWest

Lack of quotations marks also seemed to me to make sense in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, another all time favorite of mine. Perhaps because it included real life historical characters and Doctorow was putting words in their mouths, the lack of quotes suggests that he wasn't quoting them exactly but just conveying a sense of what might have happened.

It must have worked for me, because I remember quite enjoying this book, but don't remember missing quotation marks.

I guess it comes back what's been said before: when it works, it's not a problem. It becomes a problem when it draws attention to itself unnecessarily, distracts you from the narrative, or seems to be there merely to proclaim, "look how clever I am."