About quotation marks

[SimonDoom]

I remember a poster coming into the AH a few months ago complaining that their stories had been rejected, but it was unfair because they were expressing their own authentic style.

I don't have any problem with one's "own authentic style" except when what they really mean is "people should accept my stories even though I don't know the basics about how to write."

 

[StillStunned]

I don't have any problem with one's "own authentic style" except when what they really mean is "people should accept my stories even though I don't know the basics about how to write."

That was in fact the problem. "Authentic style" is only a viable argument if it's consistent and the rest of the text displays enough skill that it's clear that the writer knows what they're doing, and why.

 

[OffNSFW]

My impression of writing that doesn't set off dialogue with quotation marks is that it subsumes dialogue into the rest of the narration. There isn't as much of a separation between two modes of conveying the material, as though the narrator (the voice delivering the prose passages) were also relaying what the characters said, rather than the characters speaking directly. That's my impression of it, anyway.

For what it's worth, McCarthy's stated reason for avoiding them was entirely aesthetic. He thought it made for a cleaner page. He might have been bullshitting.

 

[StillStunned]

For what it's worth, McCarthy's stated reason for avoiding them was entirely aesthetic. He thought it made for a cleaner page. He might have been bullshitting.

About six months ago, my computer did something so that now I can't get accents on letters by simply typing the single quotation mark (or reverse quotation mark) and then the letter. It's been a bugger. I can imagine coming up with an excuse like McCarthy's if his computer had decided it didn't want to do quotation marks anymore and I had to find a workaround.

 

[Nynah]

McCarthy wrote all of his work after 1958 on a single typewriter. There are options for both single and double quotation marks, so stands to reason those keys saw very little use.