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Patience is a virtue on Lit.

A technical comment: get your narrative punctuation right:
"The other one to watch out for is Trevor." Margaret warned.
Click to expand...
should read:

"The other one to watch out for is Trevor," Margaret warned.

It's a tiny thing, but incorrect use of the full stop when a comma is required makes your speech tags ungrammatical, and gives a staccato rhythm to your dialogue. It's a constant flaw and got in the way of my reading.

I skimmed one - a simple little story, too short really to say much about. Slow down, paint more of a picture, wheel in some emotion. You're telling me stuff, but I'm not feeling much.
 
Ok, this is something I've never understood, maybe because in Italian it works differently with commas.
Suppose that the dialog line was something like:

"The other one to watch out for is Trevor!"

Here we cannot put a comma, because the exclamation mark carries a different kind of information. So I would say that in this case you have to use "!" when you add "Margaret warned.". Same with "?". But both of these have the same role as the period ".". So, it follows that, in order to just express the end of the sentence of the character in a neutral way, you would use "." and not a comma. Otherwise, it is not coherent.
Can you explain this to me, please?

Thanks!
 
bushyTrail said:
Ok, this is something I've never understood, maybe because in Italian it works differently with commas.
Suppose that the dialog line was something like:

"The other one to watch out for is Trevor!"

Here we cannot put a comma, because the exclamation mark carries a different kind of information. So I would say that in this case you have to use "!" when you add "Margaret warned.". Same with "?". But both of these have the same role as the period ".". So, it follows that, in order to just express the end of the sentence of the character in a neutral way, you would use "." and not a comma. Otherwise, it is not coherent.
Can you explain this to me, please?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
"The other one to watch out for is Trevor!" Margaret warned.

"Is Trevor the other one to watch out for?" Margaret asked.

Those are both grammatically correct because the exclamation and question marks are punctuation marks like a comma, they're not full stops. It's when the dialogue ends in a full stop that the speech tag becomes an incomplete sentence, because it's a new sentence (not the completion of the dialogue sentence).

The full stop is the trump card of punctuation, it outweighs all others. Exclamation marks and question marks are lesser things, and don't have the power to completely terminate a sentence.

It's English, which as everyone knows is the most privileged language because it enjoys its own rules, its own particular logic. Other languages are more consistent - you have my sympathy, I'm glad I don't have to learn English :).
 
Quite!

It can be confusing to have speech end in a '!' or '?' and then continue the sentence, and I try to avoid it when I can.

It also works in asides between dashes - like this! - and between parentheses (like this, maybe?).
 
electricblue66 said:
"The other one to watch out for is Trevor!" Margaret warned.

"Is Trevor the other one to watch out for?" Margaret asked.

Those are both grammatically correct because the exclamation and question marks are punctuation marks like a comma, they're not full stops. It's when the dialogue ends in a full stop that the speech tag becomes an incomplete sentence, because it's a new sentence (not the completion of the dialogue sentence).

The full stop is the trump card of punctuation, it outweighs all others. Exclamation marks and question marks are lesser things, and don't have the power to completely terminate a sentence.

It's English, which as everyone knows is the most privileged language because it enjoys its own rules, its own particular logic. Other languages are more consistent - you have my sympathy, I'm glad I don't have to learn English :).
Click to expand...

Thanks for your explanation! Especially because I, like, made this mistake a gazillion times! God, I so hate inconsistent rules! But, believe me, rules can be truly problematic in Italian too. Verbs are the stuff of nightmare, trust me. To each their own.
 
There's actually a program called Grammarly that points out this stuff for you. Can be used on its own by copying your story in or it's available as a plugin for MS Word. There is a paid subscription, but some research online suggests it's not all that superior and the free version still captures most of the important mistakes.

If you decide to use it though, do not blindly follow its advice. I use it as a reminder to check the sentences it points out myself. There's always a few cases where it doesn't interpret the sentence correctly or I just disagree with its suggestions, but overall it's a very useful tool.
 
Right now I'm using Language Tool, for LibreOffice writer, which works quite well (in English: in Italian it's mostly useless), but I'll check yours out, since mine does not really check punctuation. Thanks for the suggestion!
 
age 18

is it okay to describe a woman growing up till 18. no sex just feeling up and kissing. i'm leading up to something.
 
sdsioux said:
is it okay to describe a woman growing up till 18. no sex just feeling up and kissing. i'm leading up to something.
Click to expand...

The general rule seems to be: one line, and no details. So in your case, most you can probably do is mentioning she had a few boyfriends before and so isn't entirely inexperienced.
 
Punctuation in quotes

electricblue66 said:
Patience is a virtue on Lit.

A technical comment: get your narrative punctuation right:

should read:

"The other one to watch out for is Trevor," Margaret warned.

It's a tiny thing, but incorrect use of the full stop when a comma is required makes your speech tags ungrammatical, and gives a staccato rhythm to your dialogue. It's a constant flaw and got in the way of my reading.
Click to expand...

In fact, grammatically, you can put whatever you want inside the quote marks, because it is what the character is saying, not part of the punctuation of the narrative description. Your point would be correct if the comma was after the closing quote marks. The full stop is actually correct in this case, because (as far as I can tell from the quote), the character has completed the sentence. As pointed out by someone else, an exclamation mark would also fit in well at that point (inside the quote marks).
 
TomcattUK said:
In fact, grammatically, you can put whatever you want inside the quote marks, because it is what the character is saying, not part of the punctuation of the narrative description. Your point would be correct if the comma was after the closing quote marks. The full stop is actually correct in this case, because (as far as I can tell from the quote), the character has completed the sentence. As pointed out by someone else, an exclamation mark would also fit in well at that point (inside the quote marks).
Click to expand...

This would be true, if not for the fact that it's followed by "Margaret warned." This is what is known as a dialogue tag, attributing the dialogue to a character. When using a dialogue tag, your dialogue should always end with a comma (or exclamation point/question mark) rather than a period.
 
ThisNameIsntTakenYet said:
This would be true, if not for the fact that it's followed by "Margaret warned." This is what is known as a dialogue tag, attributing the dialogue to a character. When using a dialogue tag, your dialogue should always end with a comma (or exclamation point/question mark) rather than a period.
Click to expand...
Thank you. My Post #2 refers.

Ironically, it was also me who pointed out the examples with exclamation marks and question marks, not a "someone else" as TomcattUK seems to think. But hey, attention to detail, yeah? ;)
 
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