"Interrupted Dialogue" -- Punctuation Pedants Please

[snorkackcatcher]

The recent submission of You Tell Her was accepted only with caveats, and a strong suggestion that the story be edited and resubmitted. Some of those caveats I've no problem with (they were bona fide typos that missed both my checks and those of the betas), but one complaint just sounds -- well, wrong, actually, and a sanity check from anyone with knowledge of Writing Proper would be appreciated ...



Apologies if this is tl;dr.

The sentences to which objections were raised had a character's speech interrupted to describe some action they were performing. The example given as incorrect had Ginny speaking to Hermione about Harry:

(1) "He came to see me, and" -- both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced -- "he said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

The suggested change was:

(2) There must always be some closing punctuation mark before a closing quotation mark. When dialogue is interrupted by a sentence that is not part of the dialogue, it generally follows this pattern:

Correct: "He came to see me, and--" Both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced. "--he said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

Now this sounded odd, so I did some checking on the web. Although this seems to be a fairly obscure problem, I did find a couple of contradictory references. One Mother Miller (who is, as far as I can gather, a fantasy author who has also written a book about writing) suggests a third form of punctuation, which for the example above would be:

(3) "He came to see me, and--" both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced "--he said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

On the other hand, according to this thread the Chicago Manual of Style 15th edition decrees something that is basically what I had (except for the absence of spaces around the em-dashes, and since this is intended for screen reading rather than typesetting that might be considered acceptable):

(4) "He came to see me, and"--both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced--"he said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

So, what's the best practice then? To my eye, both (2) and (3) just look wrong.

The Miller suggestion (3) has the phrase both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced floating between two chunks of dialogue, without any punctuation to connect it to the rest of the sentence.

The recommended version (2) seems even worse. It has the first part of the dialogue ending, and the interrupting phrase then made into a sentence in its own right; and then has the second part of the dialogue starting up again as if the period had never been there.

I suspect this may be one of those awkward situations where practice varies between editors, but certainly the FA suggestion seems rather like a case of applying a general rule to an exception. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Comments

[hibernater.livejournal.com]

I rather think version 2 is right, actually. The sentence between the chunks of dialogue is paranthetical. It is a sentence in it's own right, and your dialogue is like a parallel thing. AFAIK that's correct, no boubt about it. Did I tell you I loved that story? I'll leave a detailed comment later, because I need to run, but your characterizations were fantastic :)

[lucie-p.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of the things that are handled very differently in English and America writing / punctuation.

In the HP books (Bloomsbury, aka English version), this kind of interruption is handled as in (3), except for the fact that single quotation marks and long dashes are being used.

I know this is different in the American edition, though.

(I did remmeber the HP examples because when we translated OotP, we needed to transfer this kind of punctuation into German, and there was once scene, iirc, where Snape alternately spoke and acted.)

[maple-clef.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I'm afraid interrupted dialogue is my bête noir - it never looks quite right to me. To be honest, it looked fine to me as-is (or as-was), and version 2 does look strange to me, but I'm not certain it isn't right! It must occur in canon; I wonder how JKR and her editor tackles it?

[maple-clef.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've checked. They seem to use version 3 (at least, they do on P11 of OotP, Chapter 1):

'You're a nasty little liar. What are all those --' she, too, lowered her voice so that Harry had to lip-read the next word, '-- owls doing if they're not bringing you news?'

[lucie-p.livejournal.com]

One more thought: The "interrupting" descriptory sentence needs punctuation if the person acting is someone else, in which case you would use line breaks:

"We could play some more Quidditch --"
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"-- or just take our books out into the sun to study."

If the person "acting" is the very person who is speaking you would not use line breaks - nor a completed sentence, ended by a full stop, which looks very weird, IMHO.

[octobersnow.livejournal.com]

I have no clue as to properness grammar wise, but 3 just looks the best to me. Just my opinion, but don't listen to me, I have no talent for writing.

[lucie-p.livejournal.com]

And another addition - I found the Snape scene I was thinking of earlier: OotP, Bloomsbury, page 210 (chapter 12):

'The ingredients and method –' Snape flicked his wand '– are on the blackboard –' (they appeared there) '– you will find everything you need –' he flicked his wand again '– in the store cupboard –' (the door of the said cupboard sprang open) '– you have an hour and a half … start.'

So, no punctuation when the speaker acted, and brackets when something else interrupted/happened while he spoke.

The dashes are always within the quotation marks, though.

[magnolia-mama.livejournal.com]

To further muddy the waters, the Oxford English Grammar proposes a slightly different form from any of the others you cited, namely:

"He came to see me, and--" both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced--"he said he'd hated having to split up..."

I have to say, though, that like hibernater I'm in Camp #2, though for years I was in Camp #3; I switched because the lack of capitalization and closing punctuation in the action began to look wrong to my eyes, whereas, though I couldn't give you a logical explanation why I felt this way, #2 seemed to make more sense to me.

[snorkackcatcher]

Thanks. A couple of people located some passages like this in the UK edition and they use (3) -- but of course Scholastic may do it differently. Whatever happens, it looks like I'll have to change it. (The odd thing is, I'm sure I must have used sentences like that before, and they haven't been spotted.)

[snorkackcatcher]

Ah, excellent! I couldn't find a passage where this was used. Right then, it looks like I'll have to change it (probably by going with (2) to avoid getting into arguments, mind you).

Did you actually do the German translation of OotP then? Wow, I hadn't realised.

[snorkackcatcher]

Thanks -- I couldn't manage to track down an example passage. It seems (3) is the Bloomsbury standard, but I shall probably need to go with (2) to avoid arguments. :(

It seesm to be one of those situations where there isn't any 'obvious' solution, so different people recommend different things. The annoying thing is that it's never previously come up, although I'm sure I must have used this kind of construction before.

[snorkackcatcher]

(3) seems to be the form used in the UK editions -- a couple of people found passages with dialogue of this kind. Ah well.

[snorkackcatcher]

Oops. :( As I said above, this really does look like one of those situations which doesn't have an 'obvious' solution, so several different ones are proposed (and therefore it's something to be flexible on). The annoying thing is that it's never previously been mentioned as a problem, although I must have used this kind of construction before. (I suppose I'll change it when I have time, probably either using (2) or (3) (in the latter case with a pre-emptive explanation that this is the form Bloomsbury use).)

[magnolia-mama.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. My guess is that your fic happened to fall across the desk of someone who had it beaten into their head from an impressionable age that certain things had to be punctuated just so, or else the Evil Grammar Goblins would come after them. You'll have to change it this time just to placate them, but next time around you could probably go back to your usual habit and no one would notice (or find it worth being bothered by).

[lucie-p.livejournal.com]

(2) with its complete sentence looks still wrong to me, honestly. ;)

I was taking art in (ad doing the final editing) of the German Onlione translation of OotP, which we did because ti took all those months for the official one to come out.

With HBP, we did a Blitz-translation and had a (not quite perfect, of course) full version in German available on July 17, 10 pm.
This of course spoiled those who were in charge of the final chapters mightily, as they translated before they had managed to read the whole book. *sigh*

[sparkly-stuff.livejournal.com]

These are my issues with their "correction" in (2):
"He came to see me, and--" Both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced. "--he said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

While I completely agree that the dashes belong inside the quotation marks, I find it odd that they placed a period after "pronounced," but then failed to capitalize "he". And the second set of dashes should then be removed:

"He came to see me, and--" Both her smile and her air of bewilderment became more pronounced. "He said he'd hated having to split up . . ."

But to be honest, I don't like it. And (3) seems plain wrong. I personally vote for (4).

Interrupting dialogue is a pain though--I'd be stumped too. Is this on FA? I didn't know they could get so picky. Damn.

[snorkackcatcher]

True. (Evil Grammar Goblins, heh.) In fact, I suspect that the fics are just picked up by whoever happens to be doing the checking at the time, so if I resubmitted exactly the same text it might get through without complaint. Hmm ... :)

[snorkackcatcher]

Wow, that's impressive. I think I'd have insisted on time to read the whole thing first, though. :) (Not that I'd have the second-language skills to do anything like that, of course -- all I have is a little half-remembered school French.)

[snorkackcatcher]

It was FA, yes. First time it's happened, though -- it must depend on the person doing the checking. I'll have to see what I can get away with. (Mind you, Veritaserum -- whose fanfic contest is what the fic was originally written for -- rejected it with a flat 'spelling errors' without specifying what was spelt wrong, which mystified me as Word was totally down with it. Mind you, I have my spellchecker well-trained to include all the key HP words!)

[easleyweasley.livejournal.com]

I'll go with the way JKR does it - it's the way I'd do it too.

Liked the story - and there were no spelling or grammar issues that I picked up.

Another Site Which Shall Not Be Named does seem rather picky. Which would you take as being 'correct': teeshirt, tee-shirt, or tee shirt?

And they also have issues when I write something like:

"Dunno," scratching his head.

rather than the 'correct' form:

"Dunno," he said, scratching his head.

Got to have your speech modifiers, you know.

Only wish they - and FA - were more rigorous with some of the other stuff that gets posted.

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes, I'm now getting myself into the habit of doing it the way the books do in the UK -- (3) above, although it still doesn't 'look right' for me.

I'd say 'T-shirt' with a hyphen, but all of the variants above seem fine to me. I think some people can be too picky about small stylistic issues and ignore the story, unable to see the wood for the trees.