08-22-2010, 01:50 PM | #16 |
It's Dr. Penguin now!
Posts: 3,909
Karma: 4705733
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: (USA)
Device: iPad mini, Samsung Note 3, Sony PRS-650 (rarely used now)
|
As to the original question, I'm not sure. In one class I took (jr high? High school? Can't remember), we were not allowed to use contractions, as we "did not know how to use them properly." On one computer I had, I had to refrain from using them when posting on the Internet, as the language was set to something else and turned all apostrophes to ?. That was really difficult to do. Judging from my experiences with some of the self-published works I've read, I wish the authors would also refrain from using them, as they are being used incorrectly.
I haven't noticed the lack of contractions in most of my fiction, though (outside of classics and period pieces), just in my non-fiction. |
08-22-2010, 01:50 PM | #17 | |
My True Self
Posts: 3,126
Karma: 66242098
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Trantor, Galactic Center
Device: Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
|
Quote:
That is exactialy what I am talking about, the dialogues in books. Even when I type it out that way it seems too formal. That's exactialy what I'm talking about, the dialogues in books. That looks better even if it's not dialog. |
|
08-22-2010, 02:22 PM | #18 |
Maratus speciosus butt
Posts: 3,292
Karma: 1162698
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: PRS-350
|
|
08-22-2010, 03:32 PM | #19 |
My True Self
Posts: 3,126
Karma: 66242098
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Trantor, Galactic Center
Device: Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
|
It's very common in most of the older books, and less common in most of the current fiction that I read. It seems as if it was a rule or guide line.
I'm sure that it's not common in certain genre at all. |
08-22-2010, 04:38 PM | #20 |
Professional Adventuress
Posts: 13,368
Karma: 50260224
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: The Olympic Peninsula on the OTHER Washington! (the big green clean one on the west coast!)
Device: Kindle, the original! Times Two! and gifting an International Kindle
|
I was taught that you write dialogue exactly the way someone would speak it (hence some of my rather odd contractions). some stuff out of the teens-30s, especially if it REALLY southern reads like a completely 'nuther language
|
08-22-2010, 05:14 PM | #21 |
Country Member
Posts: 9,058
Karma: 7676767
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Denmark
Device: Liseuse: Irex DR800. PRS 505 in the house, and the missus has an iPad.
|
Even the most skillful writer is probably not trying to render some kind of phonetic copy of imagined dialogue but to evoke an impression of what the dialogue sounded like. And don't forget, most fictions have a narrator who is "reporting" speech - so whose patterns of speech should we be should the rendition try to capture, the narrator reporting the speech of a character or the character themselves?
|
08-22-2010, 05:34 PM | #22 |
Maratus speciosus butt
Posts: 3,292
Karma: 1162698
Join Date: Sep 2009
Device: PRS-350
|
Okay, that makes me think of Victorian fiction and earlier. Jane Austen was the first to come to mind. Yeah, the people in those books talk like that in the dialogue. But, I believe, actual people of that time in the affluent, educated, snooty class were expected to really talk that way. Contractions were for the commoners.
I googled "Jane Austen contractions" (without the quotation marks) and found a similar thread somewhere else in the top results: http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php?topic=30934.0 |
08-22-2010, 08:51 PM | #23 |
I'm watching you!
Posts: 6,113
Karma: 22344652
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Sunny Coast Qld, OZ
Device: Sony PRS-900(unused lately) iPadAir2, want me Kindle Oasis
|
|
08-22-2010, 09:00 PM | #24 |
Banned
Posts: 13,045
Karma: 10105011
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Finally made it to Walmart.
Device: PRS 420
|
Ask my wife about contractions.
|
08-22-2010, 10:10 PM | #25 |
Guru
Posts: 762
Karma: 4837659
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: San Angelo Texas
Device: Samsung Galaxy tab
|
|
08-22-2010, 10:19 PM | #26 |
My True Self
Posts: 3,126
Karma: 66242098
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Trantor, Galactic Center
Device: Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
|
|
08-22-2010, 11:10 PM | #27 |
Banned
Posts: 13,045
Karma: 10105011
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Finally made it to Walmart.
Device: PRS 420
|
I am probably the easiest person to get along with her personality.
She likes to beat me and I like to be beaten. |
08-22-2010, 11:49 PM | #28 |
My True Self
Posts: 3,126
Karma: 66242098
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Trantor, Galactic Center
Device: Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
|
So?
At least she respects you. Unlike some I know. |
08-23-2010, 02:22 AM | #29 | |
Professional Adventuress
Posts: 13,368
Karma: 50260224
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: The Olympic Peninsula on the OTHER Washington! (the big green clean one on the west coast!)
Device: Kindle, the original! Times Two! and gifting an International Kindle
|
Quote:
|
|
08-23-2010, 04:35 AM | #30 |
Chocolate Grasshopper ...
Posts: 27,600
Karma: 20821184
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Scotland
Device: Muse HD , Cybook Gen3 , Pocketbook 302 (Black) , Nexus 10: wife has PW
|
It's because there's a shortage of apostrophes ....
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
How do Americans feel about UK spelling? | Luke King | Writers' Corner | 363 | 12-03-2010 12:07 PM |
Unutterably Silly When Automatic Spelling Correction Goes Wrong | RickyMaveety | Lounge | 11 | 10-01-2010 09:40 AM |
Spelling Macro | PieOPah | Workshop | 36 | 12-13-2008 02:27 AM |