(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

[gwynnega]

Or would you still put a period after the first bit of dialogue, make the narration a separate sentence, and make the second bit of dialogue a separate sentence?

Yes, this is the way to do it.

[gwynnega]

I guess it's more of a style thing. I would still use periods, because I think "the Doctor threw two switches" after a comma would be a little clunky.

[ionlylurkhere]

That first one I see a lot more often after sentences ending in question and exclamation marks. I think (at least some version of) Word Autocorrect it wrong, because it doesn't have a rule to pick up on the fact that the sentence that's just finished (and thus Needs A Capital For The Next Word, OMG, Or The Paperclip Will Cry At The Wrongness) inside direct speech.

[taraljc]

First thing I do, when I load up Word, is disable 99% of the Auto Correct features.

grr.

Smart Quotes and special characters (goddam Word for turning three periods into an special character) are also the bane of my existance.

[budclare]

Maybe you should include directions for turning off the autocrap.

[cschick]

With pictures?

http://fluky.gossamer.org/local/msword97.html

The autocrap doesn't need to be turned off in Word 2002/XP, if you know how to save correctly:

http://fluky.gossamer.org/local/mswordxp.html

[elen_ancalima]

This looks great - thanks for sharing! I will add it to my memories right away.

This reminds me of a question I've had for some time - maybe you know the answer. Which of the following is correct?

"How are you?" she asked.
or
"How are you?" She asked.

I think the first version is the correct one, but I've seen others use the second version as well.

[taraljc]

1st, all the way. You've prolly seen 2nd version only where Word's autocorrect feature capitalised the S by mistake...

[elen_ancalima]

Thanks a lot!

[mtgat]

Note that fanfiction.net eats asterixes, so when archiving stories there, another demarcation is going to be necessary.

[taraljc]

crap. I forgot about that. That's new. Crap.

[taraljc]

Except I think it would be:

"And so," the Doctor said cheerfully, "I've...

cos it's all still the same sentence...

Now Im confusing myself.

[taraljc]

Yay! I like winning! It's every so much better than losing.