How annoying is the lack of quotation marks to you?

[avantman42]

Now that I've seen it in colour, I think the choice of blue makes them look too much like hyperlinks (that would be even more true if there were no quotation marks). I think I prefer the use of standard quotation marks rather than a colour.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by avantman42

Now that I've seen it in colour, I think the choice of blue makes them look too much like hyperlinks (that would be even more true if there were no quotation marks). I think I prefer the use of standard quotation marks rather than a colour.

Well, obviously, it wouldn't have to be blue...but I think it's still a bit eye-blowing. ;-)

Hitch

[WashWest]

Doesn't bother me at all. I haven't read a lot of McCarthy, but The Road was one of the most haunting novels I've ever read and the lack of quotation marks just worked.

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.

Finally, lack of quotation marks (and paragraph breaks) is a key element of the style of Thomas Bernhard, whose novels are typically one long explosion of outrage at the world, unadulterated by punctuation other than an occasional period. It works for him.

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by WashWest

Doesn't bother me at all. I haven't read a lot of McCarthy, but The Road was one of the most haunting novels I've ever read and the lack of quotation marks just worked.

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.

I agree that the lack of quotation marks worked in The Road and Ragtime. I think that it also worked in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I read those three in paper. Since this thread I've questioned why I didn't like the lack of quotation marks in Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, which I read on my Kindle. Don't know if it's because it was digital, or if it seemed to be a pointless affectation, or if I am just getting old and crabby.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, obviously, it wouldn't have to be blue...but I think it's still a bit eye-blowing. ;-)

I can't think of a better colour, though, which is presumably why browsers default to blue fir links.

The trouble is, the colour needs to be distinct enough to stand out, and as soon as it does that, it becomes too distracting/eye-blowing.

[Catlady]

What is the point of putting quoted matter in color?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by avantman42

I can't think of a better colour, though, which is presumably why browsers default to blue fir links.

The trouble is, the colour needs to be distinct enough to stand out, and as soon as it does that, it becomes too distracting/eye-blowing.

I think the idea that it has to "stand out" is what is wrong with the default settings in many source code syntax highlighters - the result is a mass of confusion to the eye that makes the material more difficult to read. Quotes don't exactly stand out, especially those books that use single quotes, but they are enough to make the meaning clear. So something more subtle may work. To borrow Hitch's example, we might have:

Freddy reposed on the chaise. "Dahlink," he observed, "those silk stockings drive me positively wild."

Or without the quotes that, in theory, should now be redundant:

Freddy reposed on the chaise. Dahlink, he observed, those silk stockings drive me positively wild.

Assuming we had colour ereaders (actually the above examples are in DarkSlateGray), then this might work - although readers would need different settings to support different types of colour-blindness.

Catlady, the point in source code editors is to help make relevant syntax details easily identifiable when writing and reviewing code, so I guess that could be extended to normal prose if desired, perhaps allowing colour to supplement (or even take over) the role of punctuation. I'm not convinced that it's a great idea, in prose there are other elements of the text beyond the raw syntax (attributions and layout) that contribute to the effectiveness of the existing punctuation, changing colours may distract from the effect of these elements.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What is the point of putting quoted matter in color?

A while back in the thread, Julius Caesar wrote:

Originally Posted by Julius Caesar

Here's an idea. How about an eBook that could make quotation in one color like blue and non quotation in a different color like black? Would it be cool or would it be too distracting?

I still think I prefer standard quotation marks, though that may be because it's what I'm used to.

[Solitaire1]

I think that even if color is used to indicate spoken text quotes should also be used, despite being redundant, for the following reasons:

- To accomodate different types of ereader screens and also when printing on paper. Rather than having to have two versions of an ebook (one for color screens with colored quoted text and one for monochrome screens using quotation marks), using both will accomodate both types of screens.

- Despite some variations, quotes have become a common convention for indicating spoken text. Using them with another spoken text indicator will reduce confusion among readers since colored text for quotes hasn't become a commonly accepted convention (yet).

In a previous post I mentioned I mentioned that I used brackets in my own writing when indicating a character's thoughts. One of the reasons I chose those symbols is that to accomodate different types of screens, including some that can't display italics. Another reason I chose brackets is that it is a symbol that I don't use for any other purpose, making it clear that the text is a character's thoughts just like quotes clearly indicate text that a character has spoken.

[meeera]

How does text-to-speech handle coloured text?

[Catlady]

If you've got a perfectly good way of differentiating narrative and dialog now--quotation marks--why do you need anything else--color--to supplement or replace it?

Color certainly wouldn't help the reader tell one speaker from another, unless you want to assign each speaker a different color, but that would be beyond absurd. Color would highlight what is dialog, so you could find it, but why would you want to be able to find dialog? I've seen New Testament Bibles render all the words of Christ in red, but that's so one can find those words easily for a specific purpose. What's the purpose in your average book?

[gmw]

Think of it as an experiment. It's not just great literary authors that can play around with conventions.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by meeera

How does text-to-speech handle coloured text?

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?

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Catlady

If you've got a perfectly good way of differentiating narrative and dialog now--quotation marks--why do you need anything else--color--to supplement or replace it?

Color certainly wouldn't help the reader tell one speaker from another, unless you want to assign each speaker a different color, but that would be beyond absurd. Color would highlight what is dialog, so you could find it, but why would you want to be able to find dialog? I've seen New Testament Bibles render all the words of Christ in red, but that's so one can find those words easily for a specific purpose. What's the purpose in your average book?

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.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I've never encountered a book that completely omitted quatation marks, but I think it'd be annoying. What I do often observe, is that the closing quotation mark is missing, especially on a longer piece of dialog, like so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In most cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs should be set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks. Quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narratives. The convention in English is to give opening quotation marks to the first and each subsequent paragraph, using closing quotation marks only for the final paragraph of the quotation, as in the following example from Pride and Prejudice: