JP>Of course, none of this will help unless readers are in the JP>habit of "hearing" what they read
I know I overuse both ellipses and dashes. And now I know why. Yes, it's eumulating speech.
But the trailing off of spoken thoughts can indicate either the end of thought or the continuation. "Find some money somewhere, but I dunno..." End of thinking. "Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison ..." Continues, etc, you know. All those guys.
Or both at the same time. "A neverending battle for Truth, justice, and -- uh -- that other thing ..." The actual thought / memory has reached its limit but the speaker wants to indicate that there is more to the thought than can actually be conveyed.
It seems to me there is a useful distinction to be drawn between the two types. As if in the one case you make the grasping at empty air gesture "nothing there" while in the other you made the twirling finger "and so on" gesture. Maybe "..." for the one and ". . ." for the other.
We also need a distinction between actual quotes and scare quotes and for Ghod's sake we need to stop the people who use quote marks for emphasis. I "really" hate that.
A useful though annoyingly overused marker of speech is the rising, questioning, inflection used to solict agreement and permission to continue. Y'know? Needs a new punctuation mark I think. Something like a little arrow pointing sideways and up -- maybe -^
I have this person -^ a woman -^ in my office where I work -^ who can't get through a paragraph, y' know -^ without that kind of rising tone-^ and who doesn't -- I mean it's not intended to be, like annoying -^ -- but it really is and she really ought to notice by now, wouldn't you think -^?
It's all still evolving. The change from underlining in handwriting and typing to italics in print and screen images has been quick and seems stable. It's an interesting time.
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need more marks
Date: 2006-07-19 08:59 pm (UTC)JP>habit of "hearing" what they read
I know I overuse both ellipses and dashes. And now I know why. Yes, it's eumulating speech.
But the trailing off of spoken thoughts can indicate either the end of thought or the continuation. "Find some money somewhere, but I dunno..." End of thinking. "Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison ..." Continues, etc, you know. All those guys.
Or both at the same time. "A neverending battle for Truth, justice, and -- uh -- that other thing ..." The actual thought / memory has reached its limit but the speaker wants to indicate that there is more to the thought than can actually be conveyed.
It seems to me there is a useful distinction to be drawn between the two types. As if in the one case you make the grasping at empty air gesture "nothing there" while in the other you made the twirling finger "and so on" gesture. Maybe "..." for the one and ". . ." for the other.
We also need a distinction between actual quotes and scare quotes and for Ghod's sake we need to stop the people who use quote marks for emphasis. I "really" hate that.
A useful though annoyingly overused marker of speech is the rising, questioning, inflection used to solict agreement and permission to continue. Y'know? Needs a new punctuation mark I think. Something like a little arrow pointing sideways and up -- maybe -^
I have this person -^ a woman -^ in my office where I work -^ who can't get through a paragraph, y' know -^ without that kind of rising tone-^ and who doesn't -- I mean it's not intended to be, like annoying -^ -- but it really is and she really ought to notice by now, wouldn't you think -^?
It's all still evolving. The change from underlining in handwriting and typing to italics in print and screen images has been quick and seems stable. It's an interesting time.