(Untitled)

[taraljc]

I think there's some wide-spread confusion about things like how to punctuate dialogue, and what ellipsis are for, and how to format fiction for reading on-line. So I decided to come up with a quick-and-dirty guide. There are I'm sure a hundred of these--both fannish and just Chicago Style Guide clones floating about, but I wanted something (I

Comments

[pbristow]

Here's my perspective. In the instance you've constructed, the sequence events appears to be:

1. The Doctor says something, and operates the controls.
2. The TARDIS *unexpectedly* lurches, effectively undermining what the Doctor has just said.
3. The Doctor decides to cover his embarassment by extending the original sentence with a caveat.

And here's how I would render that:

"She's a very flash time ship."
The Doctor threw two switches, then grabbed the console as the ship listed drunkenly to one side.
"...But sometimes she needs a little motivation to work properly."

I.e. not only sing three separate sentences, but three separate paragraphs, emphasising the broken-up sequence of events.

On the other hand, if that's not the intention, and the author just wants to show in a dynamic way that the Doctor is struggling to control the TARDIS while he's talking, then try this:

"She's a very flash time ship - " (the Doctor threw two switches, then grabbed the console as the ship listed drunkenly to one side) " - but sometimes she needs a little motivation to work properly."

The dashes show that the speech is being interrupted temporarily by actual events, rather than just be the author's choice of sentence structure. (In "proper" publishing these would be long dashes, not hyphens, but you can get roughly the same visual effect using a hyphen with spaces either side of it. Some WP packages will recognise this trick and convert the hyphen character into a long dash.)

The parentheses (brackets) are there to show that the details of the action aren't really important. What that middles section is really telling you is "during this speech the Doctor is fighting with the controls", but it in a more exciting style than just adding "As the Doctor said this, he was fighting with controls" after the speech. =:o}

[pbristow]

"In the instance you've constructed"

Sorry, by "you" I mean mylildementor.