We normally cite by page and line number, thus: 2:14. Unfortunately Josh’s ‘Word” and my really bare-bones Word weren’t conceiving a page in the same way. So I had to re-do with snatches of actual text so he can search it.
One over-arching problem: the Chicago Book of Style, may it rot in hell, does not recognize my within-paragraph punctuation of period-space-em-dash ( . —) when a speaker changes addressee to, eg, give an order to a servant in mid conversation. This is admittedly an ‘old’ punctuation form. But do you know why I use it?
“I have no idea,” Bren said as the crashes and thumps went on outside, “what the man intends. —Jago-ji, is there any word from Banichi?”
This replaces: “I have no idea,” Bren said as the crashes and thumps went on outside, “what the man intends.” He looked at Jago. “Jago-ji, is there any word from Banichi?”
And it replaces it right in a sequence where you want the sentence to hitch up its petticoats and run, not schlep along with traffic directions left, right, up, down….if, for instance, he directs himself to Tano, next.
I’ve fought my publishers for that exception to standard for precisely that reason. It’s the difference between first-grade clunky address and (once readers know who is in the room) an address that flows rapidly.
Unfortunately c/e’s with their precious Book of Style can’t grok that, and they then start trying to punctuate what I write according to the Book of Style. Can’t be done. That means they start tinkering with my sentence structure or worse, my paragraphing. This c/e spawned as many as 4 successive paragraphs with only the absence of a terminal quote mark as a clue to what was going on, as she tried to make it follow the ‘rules.’
If she and I can reach an understanding about that one punctuation item, life will be good, because she’s smart and she’s good at tracking for common sense as well as grammar. I hope we can work that out.
either that, or threaten her with making her an ilin, and having to serve her one year penance in Smoked Ham……
The Chicago Manual of Style was never meant as a style guide for fiction! My condolences.
Every publisher in the US glommed onto it and views it as a life preserver…why? I dunno. Perhaps the fine print in the front of Webster’s is too tiny? It’s the one I go by, to the irritation of my publishers. That’s what Mrs. Hoyt and Mrs. Sweeney taught us, and I view it as Holy Writ.
Perhaps because the new breed of publisher never learned real English grammar in school? (FYI-Mama D here.)
If the terrible writing I see being written by students and fan fiction writers I know are over 30 are the same kind of folks in publishing positions, it is time to weep.
FiL (a former publisher and editor) is of much the same opinion. Many current editorial staffs are remarkably hidebound in some areas, while playing entirely too fast and loose in others. How much of this is due to the uptick in self-publishing, and copyreaders who mistake spellcheck for actual proofreading?
Is it not possible to file intent?
ahhhhh
did none of them ever refer to Kate Wilhelm’s book on writing papers? We were told we had to have flawless spelling and grammar, including punctuation, in my Roman History classes. Dr. Daley recommended Ms. Wilhelm’s guide. I never used it, because I had been drilled in English grammar and spelling for my first 8 years of elementary and junior high school.
Oh, they’re quite right, according to the Chicago Book of Style. They know every detail—except the basic rule of punctuation: it’s an *aid* to a correct reading. It’s not a rulebook. It’s a tool. Ideally, whether one is literate or illiterate, there *is* a way to punctuate it in such a way that a reader who had never met the author could reproduce the tone and intent of the utterance.
If a person finds it impossible to punctuate even a grammatical sentence without resort to revising the writing itself, his system of punctuation is inadequate. It’s like golf: you play the ball where it lies. You punctuate it as it was written.
AMEN! People monkeying about with my punctuation really gets up my nose.
While we’re on the subject, C.J., I wanted to ask you about the expression “In the meanwhile,” — Back in the late Silurian when I attended school, I was taught it was either, “meanwhile,” or “in the meantime” — I’ve run across “in the meanwhile” in other places besides “Deceiver” and “Intruder,” but it’s only been in about the last five or so years that I’ve started noticing it.
It’s one thing to be doing expository writing. But even there, there may be difficulty with (amateur?) editors trying to change the authors “voice”, choice of words, when the difference in words does not demonstrably clarify the understanding of a point. (Was in some articles I wrote about biochemistry and genetics for the Journal of the American Rhododendron Society!) I regard that as unprofessional. (OK, they were amateurs.)
But when one is writing drama, it’s not unprofessional, it’s egregious! Case in point, most notably, Mark Twain!
In the meanwhile is probably regional to the southern US. Meantime is an expression I’ve rarely heard aloud.
Compare waiting on and waiting for: in the south central, they’re quite equivalent, except that waiting for is a bit pretentious, and contextually can express impatience and anger with the person for whom you are waiting—it is rarely spoken except in anger: “I’ve been waiting here for him for ten minutes.” It implies ‘he’ is late. In New York, the first is to take a lunch order, and the other is what you do for a ride home.
I say “…in the meantime…” and while I have been in TX since I was seven, I was born in Virginia and I probably got it there.
“Please raise down the windows” is another Virginian expression.
My experience is the exact opposite. The instances I’ve seen treat “in the meantime” and “meanwhile” as equivalent expressions; retaining the normal usages of the noun “time” and the adverb “while”.
I’m reminded of, “That is the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put!”;)
Oh, my, yes – Styles for fiction are (should be!) very different than those for non-fiction.
To me, your use of the period and m-dash is a signal that matters are moving really quickly (different bits of information need to flow to different people). So, I do hope that your c/e agrees to accede!
My work generally involves scientific/technical writing. My bookshelves house several commercial style books (including Chicago), as well as some company-specific ones, and they frequently contradict each other. So, as long as the team agrees on the styles we’ll use, that’s great. After all, our main goals are to (1) communicate clearly and (2) be internally consistent to make it easier on the reader’s eyes and brain. [Yes, some style guides get all huffy about splitting the infinitive, while others rejoice in English’s Germanic roots. Obviously, I’m with the Germans.]
A fun part of my job is working with the team to decide what styles they prefer – those very brief, exploratory discussions about little writing details can help crystallize their ideas about what, exactly, we want to communicate.
On the other hand, I swoon with joy (metaphorically speaking) when the agreed-upon style permits hyphenating complex adjectives and employing the Oxford comma. I *do* have my own quirky preferences.
Oh yes, me too! Perhaps because I’ve had a career in computing, one of my strongest diversions is “nesting” (for personal communications, of course. Style book for publications–it’s just not worth fighting with editors over!). I apply strict nesting to quotes. If there is terminal punctuation in the material, it appears within the quotes. If the punctuation is for my sentence, it appears outside the quotes. Admittedly it does look a bit odd, but if I can’t construct my sentence so that a quote ending in a period is at the end of my sentence, then I leave the quoted period and continue with my sentence. It’s really a very simple, logical rule.
I’ve been losing my sense of humor lately with infants who insist on teaching me how to suck eggs (figuratively — ew). One would think that successfully authoring over 60 books would count for something and keep someone’s overenthusiastic fingers out of the text. I think the style book meant not having to think any more. Seems to me someone told me I had to use it once in some English class and I just ignored them. Style is supposed to count tor something, right?
😉 🙂 🙂 🙂
Heavens forbid anybody should think for themselves. All sorts might be done!
Perhaps folks who really enjoy structure derive much satisfaction from applying a rigid style code to the undisciplined words running rampant around them.
Understanding *why* you want to use a particular style means something, too. Sort of like knowing the rules and then knowingly deciding to break them.
Ohhhh, my head hurts reading all of this. I write dialog. Rarely prose. And when I do write prose it’s short and choppy and well… not something editors like.
CJ, send the editor a copy of “House of Leaves” bwahahahahaha
@Sable, That is essentially a “broken-legged” assasination! I’m sure there is a place in the Guild for one such as you!
If you have not learned how to write by now, after so many books, then there is no hope. Stand firm – it is your name on the title, not the editor.
Is it the Chicago Manual that is responsible for all the spell-checkers telling me that I have erred when I double a final consonant before appending ‘-ed’ or ‘-ing’? i.e. ‘travelling’? If so, a pox on it! I know what I was taught, even if it was in the Silurian, and what’s more, the reasoning made sense – you don’t pronounce it ‘traveeling’, after all.
I learned it well enough to be runner-up in the state Spelling Bee, and I still have the fifty-year-old award dictionary to prove it! So spell-check can keep putting its nasty little red dots under my words, but I know what I know.
Agreed! Stop messing with my fiction, Word!
Because of memory space and load time, the spell checkers only include the “irregulars” — those past tenses, gerunds and plurals that do not follow the rules. They leave out all the simple (add “s” on the end) plurals They assume you know how to follow the rules. I think it this quirk of spell checker glossaries not including simple plurals that has resulted in the anathema of people forming plurals using apostrophe “s.” – Because simple plurals are not in the glossary (you have to add them manually one at a cotton-picking time!), the spell checker balks at them. Because one of its parsing rules is that possessives end in apostrophe “s,” it throws up the possessive form as a “did you mean?”. People just assume because it’s a computer, it must be smarter than they are (which is probably true, if they don’t know how to form a simple plural), they accept the apostrophe “s” form, and then perpetrate it on those of us who paid attention in English class.
I think the spillchucker is confused because it sees the doubled consonant and says ‘not American English’.
Why can’t Word have an option,”One space or two?”
After periods? — That’s why ghod invented macros. “search for: “period two spaces,” Replace all with: “Period one space.” (or vice versa, as needed.)
Back in the dark ages, I was forced to take typing with actual typewriters. We were required (by the only teacher in the school who used that ruler on knuckles!) to put two spaces after a period or other punctuation at the end of a sentence. Where did this period one space thing come from? I recently had to take a typing test and that was the biggest issue I ran into. BUT it was only in a couple of the tests! (I took several to get a better idea of where my speed was!) SHOOT. Guess that means I need to take typing all over again?
Perhaps you could send a CJC Manual of Style with your manuscripts with the implication that arbitrary changes to spelling, punctuation or grammar to conform to an inferior style without regard to the effects on the narrative will be fought inch by inch. —
The oddest thing happened when I previewed my comment. Even though I was logged in as Brennan, the preview was attributed to “Anonymous”. I logged out and back in which took care of it.
Bizarre! We don’t even have an anonymous!