Random Punctuation Poll

[gnomi]

Random Monday Morning Punctuation Poll

[Poll #818473]

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Thoughts often go in italics.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

my thought exactly. :)

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

Mine as well.

apropos of nothing

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

that's a great userpic.

Re: apropos of nothing

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

I only gank the best. ;-)

I just wish I knew who deserves credit for that icon.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

I was gonna write this, but I thought Hmm, I'd better check to see if someone else has already posted it and then just second it.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

You win.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

What do I win? What do I win?

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

::hands you a cookie::

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

*happy munching sounds*

[xochitl42.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what I'd do. :)

[byrne.livejournal.com]

I never use the thought as dialogue construct. It's a minefield that is easy to avoid. Instead, I would use something like:

"I don't know," he lied, hiding the fact that he really did know but had no intention of sharing that fact.

(Edit for context and character, of course.)

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Yes yes me too me too. (Note the complete lack of commas because I hate sentences with as many commas as there are WORDS. Ugh.)

Unless it's first person POV, and then I sometimes use the 'I thought' thing, but with no punctuation at all.

But really, I am a clueless punctuation dork, so the better answer is "I don't know, whatever my editor (or brain, my geeky co-writer) says I should use..." LOL

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

::procures tygerseye some commas::

How do you feel about "Yes, yes; me, too, me, too"?

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

But I don't want commas! *whine and pout*

That is really, really, really ugly. Not as ugly as "Yes, yes, me, too, me, too." But really damn close. LOL

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Heh.

See, my gut instinct would be to recast it. Because I would insist on all that pumctuation there. So recasting -- "Yes," said so-and-so. "Me, too." -- is the best solution I can come up with off the top of my head. Still lots of punctuation, but varied.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

I would do that, too. But I would break it up even further...

"Yes." So and so walked over to the whatchamacallit and picked up a thingamabob. "Me, too."

;-)

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I don't actually use attributions for speech or thought, but in US English, single quotes are proper. So there. :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

in US English, single quotes are proper. So there. :)

Do you have a definitive source on this? All sources I'm finding indicate that it's a stylistic choice, and none of the choices are any more proper than any other.

[jencallisto]

I don't think I have a standard method for expressing thoughts, as it hasn't come up very often in my (mostly non-fiction) writing. I instinctively prefer the no-punctuation option, but I also suspect I might go back in later and add the double quotation marks if I feel that the sentence needs it for clarity. I like the idea of using italics.

i have, on occasion, used no-one, but i think i more often use no one.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," he said. I know, but I'm not telling you, he thought.

[quarkwiz.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's exactly what I would have chosen.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I, too, vote for italics for thoughts

[madfilkentist]

I'd use italics for thoughts; but in a medium in which italics aren't available, such as unformatted text, I'd use quotes.

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

I'm with the italic people for thoughts. I think. I apparently don't use that construction, because I had no instant response for How It Ought To Be.

Also, I never use no one, although if I did use no one, I'd use no one. noone seems clearly wrong, and no-one bothers me. I would give it to nobody, even in a parallel construction with anyone.

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

Having now read through the comments, I agree with this on both counts.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I almost always use italics for thoughts. I will occasionally integrate thoughts into the text if the text is very character-POV, but never if I'm also including the term he thought.

"Noone" always makes me think of an olde-tyme shootout: We'll meet at high noone in front of the Olde Worlde Sweete Shoppe. No one I know would hyphenate it, either. Is that another olde-tyme thing? I saw no-one to-day when I went to buy a new writing-quill.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

No-one appears to be a BrE thing. Alas, none of the BrE native speakers on my friends list have weighed in yet.

I vacilate between "noone" and "no one," since both look wrong to me.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Just looking at your example, I didn't give it to anyone seems a more typical AmEnglish construction than I gave it to no one does, even though the latter version is less ambiguous. I don't know the text you're actually working with, of course, but maybe that difference is why the objective no one looks odd to you? That may also be why cshiley above would instead use nobody.

It's a theory. But the tone of the text would of course be a major consideration.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I like the italics, but if that weren't an option, I'd go with the single quotes.

Monday morning meetings must include not only coffee but MUFFINS. I know, because I'm tne one who has to BAKE the muffins.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Muffins are a most excellent addition for Monday morning meetings.

sortof-almost OT question

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

hey, it's a grammar post so it's not completely off topic!

my RL friend aboxofeyes does copyediting. she is now wondering:
"I was putting this off for no particular reason, but now I find I really do need a good British English reference book, ideally the UK equivalent of the Chicago Manual of Style."

i thought that either you or someone on your FL might be able to help reccommend something for her. (pleez? thanks!)

Re: sortof-almost OT question

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oh, good question.

I think I shall post it as a new post, so that people who don't read all the way down the comments see the question.

Re: sortof-almost OT question

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

oo! thank you! and i'll tell her too. :)

[seborn.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. There was a Monday morning meeting?

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Actually, no. It was a long-ago-scheduled Monday morning meeting that didn't actually happen.

Fear not.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

You could have had a Monday morning meeting that was vaguely proposed on Friday afternoon, that would start half an hour before your normal workday, that would be at a location an hour away from your normal Monday morning workplace (a little place I like to call "home"), and that was confirmed via workplace email over the weekend. (Fortunately I noticed an escape clause in the confirmation email. Still, annoying.) So I remain firmly in the "better when canceled" camp. (Except for a nagging desire to spell that as cancelled, apparently because I read too many British novels in my childhood ....)

other

[cellio]

Italics when available; parentheses when confined to ASCII. And punctuation that isn't part of the quote outside of the closing quote; you might have Strunk and White on your side but I have pedantry on mine. :-)

[zsero.livejournal.com]

punctuation that isn't part of the quote outside of the closing quote;

Yes, exactly. That's what I was going to say.

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

I use italics for thought...