tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083328248557950617.post2874991650075414145..comments2023-10-07T07:36:56.859-07:00Comments on My Head Is Full of Books: Join in the discussionAnne@HeadFullofBookshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01069558006454986084noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083328248557950617.post-9956473347958057482011-04-10T19:56:32.279-07:002011-04-10T19:56:32.279-07:00Margaret and Jenni-
I am currently reading Ragtime...Margaret and Jenni-<br />I am currently reading Ragtime by Doctorow and he also doesn't use quotation marks consistently. His work and his characters, therefore, feel distant to me. Almost as if I am watching a TV show with the volume turned down to low. It is is odd. <br /><br />Now that I know that Joyce writes in this style will ensure that I will avoid him. <br /><br />Love the quotes, Margaret, they were very helpful in putting my thoughts about quotation marks together in my mind.!<br />-AnneAnne@HeadFullofBookshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01069558006454986084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083328248557950617.post-54842357806422941752011-04-10T16:48:16.736-07:002011-04-10T16:48:16.736-07:00This site supports your feeling but also talks abo...This site supports your feeling but also talks about why an author would choose to forgo the quotation marks:<br />These authors choose not to use quotation marks to differentiate dialogue, but rather simply allow their dialogue to blend with the text. Even some great authors have done this, notably James Joyce or, more recently, Cormac McCarthy. Presumably this is done for the sake of style, but to my mind this makes the reading experience unnecessarily hard on the reader. Why boycott quotation marks? The quotation mark does its job very well: it is unique and highly visible. It is as near perfect as a punctuation mark could hope to be. It was invented in the first place because there was a need for a mark to help clearly indicate dialogue. Omitting it, or refusing to indent, or replacing it with dashes, will just confuse a reader.<br /><br />There are, of course, exceptions. As I mentioned, even great authors have crafted works that, for whatever reason, avoided quotation marks. Consider this example from William Carlos Williams's "The Use of Force"...<br />The lack of quotation marks to me did make the story flow seamlessly, sort of like a Joycean stream of consciousness feel, although I do hate Joyce. :)Margarethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17197599882756386184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083328248557950617.post-83544864873067988532011-04-09T19:24:49.549-07:002011-04-09T19:24:49.549-07:00I'm surprised the copyeditor didn't say an...I'm surprised the copyeditor didn't say anything to the author. That would've drove me nuts! Bad grammar and ignoring literary conventions irritate me to no end. That's why I'm going to school to become a copyeditor. Hopefully, I can save books one at a time. ;)Jenni Elysehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08403700912436098391noreply@blogger.com