rionaleonhart | I Want To See The Zoo, She Said, I Want To See The Zoo.

WHILST I'M BEING INSECURE ABOUT MY WRITING: for as long as I can remember, I have used "double quotation marks" for speech in fiction and 'single quotation marks' for all other purposes. No style guide will recommend this: in British publishing convention, single quotes are used for all purposes, including speech, with speech within speech the only context in which double quotes are used; in American publishing convention, the situation is reversed. Does this inconsistency bother you? (Alternative question: do you have similar stylistic quirks?) I just think there's something quite nice about drawing a visual distinction between speaking and 'setting a phrase aside'. If there are two different types of quotation mark, why not put them to use?

Regarding Supernatural: I rewatched 'Fresh Blood' a little while ago, and it reminded me of how awesome Bela can be. I love that she actually seems surprised and a little upset that Dean is so angry with her for telling a murderous madman where to find them. HONESTLY, DEAN, YOU'RE SO OVERSENSITIVE. And then she helps them track him down, because, hey, she didn't know Dean was going to be so unreasonable about the whole thing. I love her.

HERE IS SOMETHING I WOULD LOVE TO SEE: a rewritten Twilight, with Bela in the role of Bella. Edward may be ridiculously strong and fast, but if he can't hear Bela's thoughts he's doomed. She will seduce him, use him shamelessly and then run off with his sister to form an amazing con artist duo. It would be pretty great. And at least Bela's unsympathetic aspects are intentional, unlike those of Bella 'Stupid Unattractive Humans With Their Stupid Being Nice To Me' Swan.

(Jo is welcome to join Bela and Alice in their con-artistry.)

(Also, Ruby can flit between the three of them, although I have not yet decided whether she would assist with the cons or whether she would ruin them for her own amusement by possessing the team members at inopportune moments.)

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Bella 'Stupid Unattractive Humans With Their Stupid Being Nice To Me' Swan That's her Indian name, yes.

I want to rewrite Twilight with Jeff and Neville as Edward and Bella, but I don't think I have the attention span for it.

As to writing quirks, I almost always stick commas and periods outside of single quotes ('like so'.) and I have no idea why. It's not grammatically correct, and it doesn't even look right, but I always do it. Maybe when I get published I'll make my editor leave it in, so that it's something that's mine and only mine alone. Another thing I do is use 'o' for '0'. (See? I did it there, too, without even meaning to.) That's intentional, because I did it as a typo once (they're right next to each other on the keyboard) and I thought it looked neat so I kept it.

And because I have to ask, where's your subject line from this time?

And because I got distracted and forgot:

"speech"
'quotes within quotes, titles'
titles. I actually was taught a very specific way to write different titles in school, none of which involved italics, and when I asked Ms. English why, she said, "Because you can't write in italics by hand", which confused me, because I can. And often do. (it's not that hard.)
(thouhts within a thought)

Heh, we had to underline, which made me go, "But... I can write in italics! You just need to turn the paper (or your hand) more!"

I tried to write in italics once, to show my teacher I could, but he just said that with my handwriting it was impossible to be sure if it was italics or if I was just too lazy to turn my paper. (which was a bit ridiculous, because I do it by tilting my hand more, not the paper.) I don't know what he was talking about. My handwriting isn't that bad; I just have a bad habit of trying write in fonts (usually made up) based on where I'm at on the page and how I see someone's voice in my head. And somehow combining cursive and print. I'm not sure how I do that.

It is entirely grammatically correct! Putting commas and full stops after the closing quotation mark is the British style when a) the quotation marks do not surround direct speech, and b) the full stop doesn't obviously belong to what is inside the quotation marks (I can't think of a good example of this right now, alas). Another thing I do is use 'o' for '0'. is exactly what I or anyone else from Britain would write (er, assuming we used 'o' for '0', which I don't. See, there I put the comma outside the quotation marks).

Taking some quick examples from recent Livejournal posts of mine:

'subway' instead of 'tube',

In any case, she says something (probably adorably) that amounts to 'OH NO MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS'.

Colin just sits there going 'THANKS, GUYS'.

So you're not being grammatically incorrect; you're just using a system from a different country (and a system that I personally think makes more sense). Of course, this means it's not something that's yours and yours alone, I'm afraid, but at least it means you can justify your use.

The subject line comes from this scene in a television play called Nuts in May.

I really need a 'rambling about punctuation' icon.

(Edited for a typo.)

Edited 2009-04-25 08:05 (UTC)

Then perhaps I'll vary the punctuation, etc. based on the character that's speaking. (Erin would probably use a quirky, unique to her style thatfits somewhere between American and British, while Morgan would perhaps use a very very grammatically correct style, given that the girl I based her off of was very into correct grammar. Whereas I only cared about spelling.)

I Want To See The Zoo, She Said, I Want To See The Zoo.

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