Simple question
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lovecraft68
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I'm a little out of my league here, but I believe is is capped if you're addressing them as a title, which you are.
I don't think it's capped in the case of referring to them such as "I'm not sure mom would let you do that."
PennLady
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If it's direct address, then definitely capitalize. I think when I write it, if there's a an adjective in front of it, I don't capitalize, such as "Maria's mom," "my mom," her dad," etc.
For a sentence like, "I don't think Mom would let you do that," then I capitalize.
For a sentence like, "I don't think Mom would let you do that," then I capitalize.
A
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Good question. My uderstanding is that when referring to a father, it's dad. When speaking to a father, it's Dad. And I could be wrong. Hoping SR will weigh in on this. He knows better than anybody else.
snoopercharmbrights
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I am with lovecraft68 here.
"Hey, Mom, can I play outside?"
That is exactly what I would do, but being old-fashioned and British I would call her "Mother".
Okay,
Just a quarter turn tighter. This example would be correct then.
"Hey, Mom, may I play outside?"
"Ask your dad."
"Mom, Dad said it's up to you."
******
According to pennlady, the 'your dad' should not be capitalized
but then capitalize it like I did in the last sentence.
Just a quarter turn tighter. This example would be correct then.
"Hey, Mom, may I play outside?"
"Ask your dad."
"Mom, Dad said it's up to you."
******
According to pennlady, the 'your dad' should not be capitalized
but then capitalize it like I did in the last sentence.
snoopercharmbrights
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Yes. The difference is that the 'your dad' is identifying the person by attaching "your" to a generic class of objects identifier (analogous to 'your dog') whereas the second occurrence of 'Dad' is using the word as a personal name (proper noun).
Try:
"Hey, Charlie, where's your dog?"
"I think Snoopy is on his kennel."
Capping mom and dad
As another way of making snooper's point, proper names are capitalized. So anyplace where you can substitute a name for mom or dad -- like John or Jane -- then the kinship terms should also be capped.
Your mom is mean. Your Jane is mean. Substitution doesn't work -- no caps.
Do you think Mom will let us go? Do you think Jane will let us go? Substitution works, so cap it.
One smartass student asked if that would apply to "bro." I threw a book at him.
As another way of making snooper's point, proper names are capitalized. So anyplace where you can substitute a name for mom or dad -- like John or Jane -- then the kinship terms should also be capped.
Your mom is mean. Your Jane is mean. Substitution doesn't work -- no caps.
Do you think Mom will let us go? Do you think Jane will let us go? Substitution works, so cap it.
One smartass student asked if that would apply to "bro." I threw a book at him.
A
AsylumSeeker
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As another way of making snooper's point, proper names are capitalized. So anyplace where you can substitute a name for mom or dad -- like John or Jane -- then the kinship terms should also be capped.
Your mom is mean. Your Jane is mean. Substitution doesn't work -- no caps.
Do you think Mom will let us go? Do you think Jane will let us go? Substitution works, so cap it.
One smartass student asked if that would apply to "bro." I threw a book at him.
Was it a big book? Did it hurt? Was it in the crotch where big books should go? Did he scream bloody murder? Inquiring minds like to know.
Or maybe this is all BS. There was no book to the crotch. <Crossing legs in case BS should be lowercase>,
snoopercharmbrights
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These are dialect problems.
Older people in south-east England will mostly use mother, medium aged will mostly use mum and the young are adopting mom. Regional dialects vary and in Wales it will usually be mam while in in some parts of northern England it will be ma. (Just to confuse this, one of my ex-wives addressed her mother as "mum" when she was talking normally, but "mother" when she was annoyed with the good lady.)
I don't know what your mother tongue is, but I assume that you also have regional dialects in your country. I know France has different patois in different regions and although I am sufficiently fluent to work in French, I am often accused of being Belgian when septante or nonante slips into a sentence.
I am quite sure there are dialect differences in the USA also, though the best I can do is recognise some of the accents. Perhaps PL can confirm a vague memory that in Connecticut they use the word pavement for what most of the US calls a sidewalk?
cocput
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A related doubt, then.
How much should we as authors be careful about dialects?
I know of different dialects of the same language where the same word means two different things. I know it is an extreme example, but still, as an author in general and as an author in this site specifically, how much stress should we give on dialect?
If we use a dialect that the reader doesn't relate to, then how do we deal with it?
sr71plt
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Writers should just just enough dialect to give the reader flavor--and not enough to intrude on the read. It's like stage sets and costumes. What the audience sees isn't at all what's actually there and what's there is only enough to put the audience in the proper mood.
snoopercharmbrights
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It is a matter of choice, but you will see stories on here which have a caveat about being written in UK English. The UK/US translation problem is horrendous; just a few examples:
Regular in the UK means at equal intervals of time whereas in the US it means normal or usual.
Suspenders in the UK means what I use to keep my socks up whereas in the US it means what I use to keep my trousers up.
Ass in the UK means donkey whereas in the US it means buttocks.
For more examples go to here.
There is also a problem with accents. It is virtually impossible to render accents in writing in any easily understood way.
I agree with you for the most part. It takes somebody with an acute ear and massive writing skills to render accents and dialect. My only quibble might be that if you do it with a very light touch, you can sometimes convey the presence of a dialect. Just a word or phonetic spelling here and there, but not too much. Maybe the inverse is more important -- don't put Americanisms or Oz-speak in the mouth of a British character.
Overusing dialect can get boring and make a store hard to read. After five years, I still haven't plowed through Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon," even though it's a brilliant book. The 18-century dialect is just too hard to follow for long reads. He did the dialect well, but so what if the result hammers your brain? It's sort of like teaching a pigeon to build a house of cards. You can admire the work that went into it, but the result is ho-hum.
And James Thurber wrote a funny satire of the Erskine Caldwell style of novels in dialect, called "Bateman Comes Home." It goes on for three pages or so in Caldwell style, breaks off, and ends with a last paragraph that says, although my quote is probably not exact, "If you continue with this long enough, you'll have a novel."
cocput
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Can you give some references for it, preferably from some work that is freely available online?
snoopercharmbrights
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An example, at least; if you want to put a story back into the early 20th Century in the north of England working class use the second person singular form (thou - nominative, thee - accusative) among family and close acquaintances.
D.H.Lawrence does it well in Lady Chatterley's Lover which is available on the net. Try towards the end of http://www*******-literature.com/dh_lawrence/lady_chatterley_lover/10/
cocput
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I read the dialogues in the entire chapter. Every word seemed normal to me. I couldn't differentiate anything as related to a dialect. Can you cite one or two words for dialect in it?
Is this also a good reference for POV switch and internal dialogue?
snoopercharmbrights
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When Mellors says "It's life," he said. "There's no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear you might almost as well die. So if I've got to be broken open again, I have." his speech is indistinguishable from Connie's.
When he says "Tha mun come to the cottage one time," he said, "shall ta? We might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb." or "I could die for the touch of a woman like thee," he said in his throat. "If tha' would stop another minute." he has slipped into using second person singular in a peculiarly Notts/Derbys fashion, 'mun' is local dialect for 'must', and I can hear the change of accent, but I used to live only a few miles from where this is placed.
The POV is all third person omniscient.
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snoopercharmbrights
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Grammatical constructs and local words are dialect. The way they are pronounced is accent.Does it has something to do with the grammar construction? Really I haven't read about it on my language subject or i was just not present during the class.
Nowhere is this difference clearer than in the TV comedy series "Allo, Allo".
