*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

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

No, the dash is the better punctuation here. Not entirely sure it's correct, (and I'm a bit dash-happy myself, so am biased!) but Tipper's example is definitely wrong; "his eyes narrowed" isn't what's saying the quote ("his eyes" can't speak, and "to narrow" isn't a way to speak) so you can't use a comma with the quotes. A comma at the end of a quote indicates quote attribution, so you have to use a verb that denotes speaking:

"All I'm saying," he said, his eyes narrowing, "is that I'm not certain why Xparrot is butting in here!"

(Occasionally certain non-vocal action words can be used to attribute speech - "Like this," he smirked. - or a non-speaking thing can be attributed with speech - "Get out of here," his eyes screamed. - but those are tricky exceptions. In general only use the comma at the end of a quote when you're going to attribute it. So "But punctuation is annoying," she sobbed. is fine, but "I know, I hate commas," he blinked. is not.)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I hadn't even thought that it reads like an attribution when it's set off with commas. I guess I'm just used to seeing people do that and parsing it as it's intended.

There might not actually *be* a grammatical way to interject an action in the middle of a spoken sentence like that. I expect that grammar books would probably instruct that it be avoided either in the way you suggested or by moving the action to one or the other end of the sentence: His eyes narrowed. "All I'm saying is that I'm not certain where we started from."

"Get out of here," his eyes screamed.

*snort* But the less of those the better, really, because otherwise you run into badfic territory. That example sounds awesomely badficcy to me. XD

"Get out of here," his eyes screamed. "Run!" his legs put in, and his nose concurred, adding to the chorus. Meanwhile his ears were humming a happy tune just to be contrary.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

*snrrrk* to the bad!fic!

Yeah, the speaking eyes and faces and whatnot happen a lot in fanfic. I think it's related to euphemism overload, people trying to avoid repetition of names or phrases. I used to do it myself a lot myself, but now it looks weird to me.

As I have to remind myself sometimes, dropping in a "he said" doesn't break up the flow of a sentence, usually; "said" is such a neutral word that it's quite invisible, most of the time. There's few times that, "If you value your life," she said, eyes flashing, "be somewhere else." reads any less or more dramatically than, "If you value your life--" her eyes flashed, "--be somewhere else." And the former will tick off fewer pedants!