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

[rionaleonhart]

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.)

Comments

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

THIS COULD POSSIBLY BE THE BEST CROSSOVER IDEA EVER.

Also, I pretty much do what you do re: double quotes and single quotes. I don't consider it an issue so much.

Deliberately compounding my thoughts on the matter this time. :P

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Same here regarding your single vs. double quotes. I wonder if it's one particular publisher's style convention in the UK, because I've certainly seen a more flexible attitude towards the use of quotes in speech in some books I've read.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

True fact: I will not read a book (or a fic) if the speech is given in single quotation marks. It just peeves me. I do enjoy writing where the author has made a stylistic choice not to use any kind of quotation marks to signify speech, though.

[make-a-move.livejournal.com]

I've always used double speech marks for speech, and single for other use. I never knew it was any different!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

True enough. It's particularly intriguing to see it rendered in the French style, with indents and dashes and whatnot. It becomes more about the speech and less about the speaker, strangely.

[rionaleonhart]

I am glad that others fly in the face of publishing convention!

Investigation time! I just looked at some novels published by Penguin, Bloomsbury, Vintage, Jonathan Cape, Picador, Headline, Oxford University Press and ATOM. The ATOM book was the only one that used double quotation marks (and it used them for both speech and setting-aside), but that's probably because the book in question was (ahem) New Moon and therefore originally American. I don't have any ATOM books by British authors, so I don't know how they compare. (The Picador book was also American; presumably Picador's style guide recommends single quotes no matter what a book's origin.)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I am ashamed to say that I use quotation marks rather indiscriminately. Double ones for speech, always, but for any other purpose I switch between single, double, italics, underlining, bolding, blockquoting, capslock or no indication at all depending on mood. Which I'm sure annoys the piss out of people.

[pornontoast.livejournal.com]

I was taught in primary school to use double marks for speech and only realised that it was seen as wrong a couple of years ago...

[rionaleonhart]

Will you seriously not read a book if the speech is in single quotation marks? Do you import all of your books from America? I just took a random sample of ten novels, and all but one used single quotation marks for speech. Single quotes have the 'wait, is that a closing inverted comma or just an apostrophe?' problem, but beyond that they don't bother me on paper.

Single quotation marks in fic do strike me as a bit odd, though, perhaps because I've come to expect a certain type of punctuation on the screen.

(I always use single quotes when I'm writing by hand, but I suspect that may largely be due to laziness.)

[rionaleonhart]

WE ARE THE PUNCTUATION REVOLUTION.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't read a lot of books anymore anyway, but I guess I am less strict about that with books rather than fics. It still peeves me!

[rionaleonhart]

I think I may have been taught that, as well. At least, when I look back at my writing from my primary school days, there are double marks there, and I don't know why I'd use double quotation marks for speech now when all the books around me use singles otherwise.

[rionaleonhart]

I am immensely relieved to find out that others use quotation marks in the same way. It's something I've always vaguely worried about. (But it makes so much sense!)

And I am glad you like the crossover idea! Now write it.

[make-a-move.livejournal.com]

VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

Alas, while I am often tempted to write crossovers, I've never read/seen Twilight. While I'm sure I could probably get away with writing characters like Edward (is there any way to make a sparkly vampire OOC really?) but fear ruining characters who sound kind of amazing, like Alice.

-waves an 'all I know about Twilight, I learned from LJ users' flag-

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

I once read a fic where the speech was signified like this:

-Speech goes here. Action goes here. -More speech by the same speaker here.

It was really strange, but it actually just made me love the fic all the more as I really liked the very, very unusual style in which it was written.

[nomelon.livejournal.com]

I always, always used single marks for speech and double marks for a quote etc within a sentence. Until fanfic. I got told by three betas in a row that it was terribly off-putting, and far too British, so I made myself make the switch to double marks for speech and now it looks really funny to me the original way round.

Yet another fandom intrusion into my life.

[rionaleonhart]

Stay quiet! People won't notice! Well, unless you switch between multiple ways of formatting the same thing in the same, say, paragraph. (Since beginning my course, I've been flipping helplessly between single quotes (what I used previously) and italics (the standard formatting in books on linguistics) when I want to indicate that I'm talking about a word as a word. Do I say that Americans say 'pants' instead of 'trousers' or that Americans say pants instead of trousers? I DON'T KNOW.)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Oho, no, they notice. At least two of my friends are professional editors and they BLOODY WELL NOTICE. And with such *language* it makes me cower. I fire your own advice right back at you. I also am tempted to get up and go and look in The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television (or is that 'The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television'?) to see what That Nice Prof Pinker does.

I think this is my only icon with a book in it, so it'll do for a comment about writing.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

"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?"

I do the same thing! I wonder if it's something I unconsciously picked up from fanfiction? Because I did it even in my first piece of English fanfiction, and I also did it in my first piece of Dutch fanfiction, which I wrote before I even really knew what fanfic was. Although I did read Savage Garden RPF on forums before I really knew what fanfic was, so maybe I picked up the double quotation mark thing for speech from that.

The adventures of Bela are a version of Twilight I would actually read!

[tigriswolf]

That idea? Is golden. Now I want it so bad.

[rionaleonhart]

Awww, that's a bit sad. We British writers are not allowed to use the punctuation to which we are exposed in published works! Cruel, oppressive Internet! You can make us use double quotation marks, America, but nothing will ever convince me that "So you call these 'trousers?'" makes more sense than "So you call these 'trousers'?"

(Actually, single quotation marks for speech in fanfiction look odd to me as well. I'm just so used to double quotation marks when I'm reading something on a screen.)

[rionaleonhart]

I should say 'most people won't notice'. Most people who are not editors. I do some editing in the holidays, so I hope I would notice such things, as otherwise I am rubbish at my job, but I assume the majority won't pick up on it.

Possibly as an editor I should be saying 'HOW DARE YOU BE SO INCONSISTENT, I AM APPALLED', but in an entry about my own inconsistencies I feel it would be a mite hypocritical.

Ooh, look, I've got The Language Instinct right next to me! He uses italics in there.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Oooh, editing for whom?

I AM JEALOUS. I want that book, and now I have no idea of the ethics of buying anything from Amazon any more. :S

[pointytilly.livejournal.com]

I use double for everything except for quotes within quotes/within dialogue, where I use single. Like: "Bob's claiming you got drunk and kept yelling 'I am not the walrus' all last night," Alice said, raising an eyebrow. "What's up with that, Fred?"

I have no idea if that's proper, but it works. I don't really notice different systems as long as they stay consistent and dialogue has something around it. My eyes aren't the best in the world, and I easily skip around/get lost without some kind of dialogue indicator (or at least italics).

My personal quirk is always typing two spaces after a period. Never mind it doesn't even show in HTML unless you do dirty things with non-breaking spaces, I...can't stand not to.