*cue inner grammar pedant*

[sholio]

There's a grammatical mistake that I've been seeing all over the place lately. Like ... just about every third story I read. It's not big enough to make me stop reading, but it's driving me BONKERS.

You don't put a period between a line of dialogue and the attribution, unless the attribution is a new sentence. And you do not capitalize the start of the attribution line UNLESS it is a new sentence!

For example, this is correct:

"Hi, guys," John said.
"Where are we going?" said John wearily.
"Hey Teyla." John turned to smile at her.
"I just want to know where we are." Turning in a full circle, John couldn't see a recognizable landmark anywhere.

But this is wrong:

"Hi, guys." John said.
"Where are we going?" Said John.
"Hi, Teyla." Said Rodney cheerfully.

AAAUGH. (It hurt to even type those sentences on purpose.)

There are only a few writers (mostly new ones) who do it consistently throughout the story, so I know in most cases it's a typo -- a period for a comma, say -- or an accident. And I wouldn't be surprised if I've occasionally been guilty too. But it's cropping up EVERYWHERE lately and I just wanted to drop a quick note to be watchful for it when you're writing and beta'ing, because when I start stumbling across it in a story, it gets to the point where I'm not paying as much attention to the plot as I am to bracing myself for the next error, and you want the reader to be sucked into the story and not looking at the mechanical details, right?

Comments

[cat-77.livejournal.com]

Heh. This rant shows up over on fanficrants at least once or twice a month. You'd think people would know better, or at least learn the correct usage eventually, but no luck.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

LOL. I'm also amused at how many comments this post has gotten. Obviously it's not just me!

[trobadora]

I will never understand how you can get that wrong in the first place. (Apart from typos, of course.) Don't these people read?!

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I don't know! I get the idea that some people easily soak up grammar rules and others learn them with painstaking difficulty. But that one is so ubiquitous that you'd think it would be very hard *not* to learn!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I had a flister ask about this last week. She knew there were rules, she was just having trouble figuring them out. Which is so much better than wilful puncutation abuse.

Do you know the book/series "Eats, shoots and leaves"? It's all about this kind of thing. Personally I prefer the radio version, because you can just hear how passionate the author is about these things, and it really gets to why it matters, and isn't just pedantry ;)

*shudder* Those examples are painful. Ouch.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Hee, I loved that book when I read it a few years ago! I borrowed it from a friend who is also a strict grammar pedant. We joke now about the apostrophe-on-a-stick. (Along those lines, have you seen The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/)?)

[roga.livejournal.com]

Oh my god those hurt to reeeeead.

I actually mentioned this kind of mistake: "Hi, guys." John said. to a House writer once, who consistently wrote all her stories like that. She told me that that's how they wrote in Australia. I never checked it out, but I don't know, it could be true? I know that in Hebrew there are some punctuation differences from English that drive me crazy.

(Like, attributing speaking quotes "like this", instead of "like this," before commas sometimes. Gah.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

(Like, attributing speaking quotes "like this", instead of "like this," before commas sometimes. Gah.)

Yeah, punctuation within quotes does depend on which side of the Atlantic you're on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Punctuation)...and I admit that, counter to the standard American rules I was taught, I often prefer the non-associated punctuation on the outside of the quotes; it looks neater to me.

But I've never heard of any English punctuation rules that allow you to use periods in place of the commas. And this pamphlet from Melbourne Uni (http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:7Jjf7t3NfBkJ:www.services.unimelb.edu.au/asu/download/Punctuation-quotation-flyer.pdf) would indicate that Australian English isn't an exception?

[ariadne83]

The Australian excuse is bullshit (I'm from Down Under).

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I'm betaing a co-written fic right now, desperately hoping I catch all of these. My co-writer is talented, but unfortunately makes those kind of mistakes a lot. Argh.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

*g* Yeah, I feel your pain. I'm back in college (after over a decade of not being in college; it's weird) and dreading the "group" project in one of my classes -- I vaguely remember that these always seem to entail either me doing all the writing parts, or resigning myself to a lower grade because half my classmates can neither write nor spell!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Ow. My inner pedant is whimpering.

(She's still recovering from the onslaught of its/it's confusion that turns up everywhere, including professionally published stuff...)

[reen212000.livejournal.com]

OMG. Yes. The highly abused apostrophe.

[julii-wolfe.livejournal.com]

my thesis is a creative writing project. I just spent the morning editing this exact same problem. I'm hoping the editing process has hammered the correct format into my brain.

*hopes never to offend the friendship goddess*

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

LOL. The goddess is not a vengeful goddess.

[bratfarrar]

Yeah, I've reached the point of no tolerance for this sort of thing. Doesn't matter how intriguing the premise is: if they can't manage basic punctuation, they're not getting me as a reader.

Also (and I feel obnoxious and pushy whenever I say this sort of thing, so feel free to ignore me because I probably would) this is an excellent thing to link to/cross-post on writers_lair--especially since I know we have some non-native English speakers there who might not be aware of the finer points of punctuating dialogue.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's not a bad idea! You don't think it's too ranty? It's basically just me mouthing off about a peeve; it's not really designed to be a teaching tool. But I would be happy to crosslink if you're cool with that!

[reen212000.livejournal.com]

Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.

Being a grammar whore is bad enough. But I also work for a newspaper. AP style is an antiquated writing style that drives me crazy. Sometimes, I find myself using that instead of the proper grammar.

Ugh.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I worked for newspapers for 12 years and I find myself tending to write in AP style after so many years of editing other people's stylistic errors. :D (I was in the advertising department, not the copy desk, but we still tried to adhere to AP style wherever possible.)

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

I've noticed this mistake occasionally...but as there are so many more blatant spelling and grammar mistakes in fanfic that make me weep tears of blood, punctuation generally fails to annoy me as much. This is partly due to the fact that as a linguistically detail-oriented non-native speaker, I have learned to accept that in most US-Americans' eyes, there is no such thing as "proper punctuation." & ;-)

(Thanks, by the way, for not saying, Grammar Nazi. As you can imagine, THAT one makes my blood boil: one pseudo-comparison that should not be drawn.)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Regards your last point - you're welcome. :) I have very specifically been trying to train myself OUT of that particular phrase (in all its variations -- the entire *frivolous thing* Nazi comparison). It is interesting how embedded this stuff can become ...

And yes, I think very often non-native speakers have a better grasp on the grammatical rules of a language than native speakers do, because they had to learn them very consciously as adults.

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

*sighs in relief* I'm happy to know I'm not the only one. Commas and periods are not interchangeable. Proper punctuation and capitalization are not voluntary. Apostrophes have a defined purpose!

Gah!

[astridv.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too! Only recently in two otherwise perfectly fine stories. That kind of punctuation mistake drives me crazy because it tears me out of the narrative every single time someone opens their mouth.

I've actually started to wonder if that is how they do punctuation in some country. I know that we do it differently in Germany. Here it would be:
"Hi, guys", John said. (I *think*. I actually know English punctuation better than German.)

I learned that rather significant little difference in fandom, not in high school as one would expect.

[trobadora]

I know that we do it differently in Germany.

You are right! And I learned it in practice as well, not at school.

Since the last spelling reform, we also do things like: "Neat!", John said. or "WTF?", Rodney exclaimed. That one took some getting used to! Not that I care if people stick to the old rules so long as they're internally consistent. :)

[estel_angel.livejournal.com]

It took me a moment to click what you are refering to english was never my strongest subject. I can see how it could bug you it is a silly basic mistake. It is rather distracting I hate to start to read a story that sounds really good they get bogged down in bad gramer etc.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I swear it's like some people hate commas. Along with your example, you also have the run-on sentences in desperate need of a comma and fractured sentences in desperate need of a comma.

I find the abuse of exclamation points my own bigger pet peeve, though. If just about every sentence of dialogue ends with an exclamation point, then I stop reading. And don't get me started on elipses that are longer than three periods :P

[bratfarrar]

Sometimes I feel like yelling "Strunk & White, people! Just read Strunk & White! Please!!!" Which is poor writing, but captures my sentiment pretty well.

[sheron]

Yeah, this was very helpful when my beta pointed it out to me many years back. Coming from a different language where punctuation is completely different these were some rules I had to learn. Still get it wrong sometimes and still have to think about it sometimes, but at least I recognize the rule!

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

Some people--like younger/newer writers--can be forgiven. Temporarily. *nods kindly* Other writers feel that it's perfectly acceptable to throw punctuation willy-nilly into a story. Yes, just toss those commas and quotation marks around and see where they land! Even a good story is difficult to read when the writer doesn't have the basics straight.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

It's a fair complaint. I'm not guilty of it myself (although, once upon a time, fanfiction.net magically erased all my punctuation out of one of my fics, then replaced everything with periods. Everything. It was traumatizing). I am, however, guilty of the opposite, namely, putting a comma where a period belongs. I did stop doing it eventually, but most of my stories are guilty of it.

Curiously, I have a harder time remembering to correct this kind of error when I put it between dialogue. E.g. "All I'm saying," his eyes narrowed, "is that I'm not certain where we started from." I think it partly comes from the fact that I'm not sure how to punctuate the dialogue. To use ellipses seems to draw out the pause too long. How do you solve it?

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I never specifically noticed it in your fic, though comma splices (that's what you're talking about, right?) are SO common that it may just be I don't notice them anymore. :D

That example that you gave -- I'm really not sure what the "official" grammatical solution for that is. Personally (like you) I prefer to avoid ellipses, in a situation like that or in general; I think they simply stand out too much, and I only use them when I really want to emphasize a pause. (Like exclamation points -- most of the time, it looks better to me to use normal punctuation unless a character is really SHOUTING!) On the other hand, I overuse dashes horribly, and I often reach for a dash in a situation like that:

"All I'm saying --" his eyes narrowed "-- is that I'm not certain where we started from."

... even when I probably shouldn't; I think your version is more grammatical than mine, but I know ME and I suspect that I would probably punctuate it that way unless someone, a beta for example, manages to talk some sense into me!

[melibabe.livejournal.com]

The one that continues to give me the nails-on-blackboard-shudder is "John was sat at the edge of the pier" and all its many permutations. ("Was stood" really bugs me.) Apparently, in England (?) this structure is very common. They don't seem to want to use the past progressive anywhere.

ETA: Oops, apologies for slipping a grammar peeve into a punctuation thread. You can see how much it bothers me. ;)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh ow -- do people do that? I haven't really noticed that one, but just reading your example hurts me. :D

[argosy.livejournal.com]

I do that right. *basks in superiority*

The one that makes me want to start hurting people is not putting a comma between someone's name and the body of dialogue in direct address.

"Come with me John"
"I love you Rodney."

And there are so many writers who seem just not to know and do it EVERY GODDAMN TIME.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

That one is my number one pet peeve. I can ignore other punctuation mistakes if the fic is good, but the Mysteriously Missing Comma before/after the name, that's a dealbreaker. When the author's writing looks otherwise promising, I usually offer concrit regarding the comma thing. It's always been positively received (and it beats going back into the story and putting in the commas manually like I did one time).

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

Really? Because I just scrolled past three posts using "whose" in place of "who's". ... Is grammar actually taught anymore? By anyone? ::dies::