How to punctuate a stammer

[MichelleS]

Posting here at Maryn's suggestion:

I have a character who gets overwhelmed, and I want to show it by having her stammer--like the words are dammed up and she can't express herself. After some thought, I went with ellipses to show the pauses while she tries to find words.

How would you all do it?

 

[CMBright]

Elipses will imply pauses, perhaps long enough other characters break up the character's dialogue. I tend to see hyphens used to indicate repeating a sound, which is what I think of as a stutter or stammer.

 

[Maryn]

To me, ellipses are for pauses to think, or for trailing off, the sentence either left incomplete or finished only inside the speaker's head. (There are apparently quite a few websites that disagree with me, which is not news.)

As far as I know, there's not an agreed-upon way to punctuate a stammer (although there is for a stutter, oddly enough). But there's a general agreement on the difference between a stutter and a stammer, and maybe it informs your punctuation choice.

A stutter is dialogue that gets hung up on the initial sound of a word. It can be a s-s-single letter or an initial sound, like th-th-th-this. (And that's how you punctuate it.) A stammer is dialogue that hangs up on an entire word, or according to some, a complete syllable.

So I guess what I want to know is whether she's really stammering, if she's unable to collect her thoughts in time to say the words, or if she's stopping herself by censoring as she speaks. (It's all so complex, eh?)

Stutter:
Sh-sh-she went out the b-b-b-b-back!
Stammer:
She went, went, went out the back!
Groping for words:
She... She went... out the back!
Self-interrupting inside one's head:
She went-- out the back!


Maryn, hoping this makes sense

 

[MichelleS]

Elipses will imply pauses, perhaps long enough other characters break up the character's dialogue. I tend to see hyphens used to indicate repeating a sound, which is what I think of as a stutter or stammer.

In this case, I think a stammer is what I want, which is different from a stutter IMHO. For a stutter, I would agree with you but that isn't quite what I want here.

 

[CMBright]

In this case, I think a stammer is what I want, which is different from a stutter IMHO. For a stutter, I would agree with you but that isn't quite what I want here.

Thank you, but I do think Maryn explained the variations much better than I did.

 

[MichelleS]

So I guess what I want to know is whether she's really stammering, if she's unable to collect her thoughts in time to say the words, or if she's stopping herself by censoring as she speaks. (It's all so complex, eh?)

Groping for words:
She... She went... out the back!

I think she's stammering, as in she can't find any more words to explain her situation, (although now that I'll googling it, there is apparently a lot of overlap in meaning.) She's trying to explain what's wrong and has gotten overwhelmed and tangled up in her words.

(Am I allowed to post an example?)

 

[MichelleS]

Thank you, but I do think Maryn explained the variations much better than I did.

She did put it very well.

 

[Maryn]

You can post a sentence or two, no problem. If it needs context, tell us what's going on first?

 

[anaemic_mind]

As someone currently grappling with an occasional verbal finding the right words issue, repeating the word that immediately proceeds the one I can't remember tends to happen, usually accompanied by me gesticulating madly trying to either point to it or conjure up the right word, much to the amusement of my family.

'Pass the... the the the... salt, please.'

 

[Brigid Barry]

I think she's stammering, as in she can't find any more words to explain her situation, (although now that I'll googling it, there is apparently a lot of overlap in meaning.) She's trying to explain what's wrong and has gotten overwhelmed and tangled up in her words.

(Am I allowed to post an example?)

Is it like Red in the movie Pearl Harbor where he literally can't speak in times of intense excitement?

ETA: VIDEo here

?

 

[MichelleS]

As someone currently grappling with an occasional verbal finding the right words issue, repeating the word that immediately proceeds the one I can't remember tends to happen, usually accompanied by me gesticulating madly trying to either point to it or conjure up the right word, much to the amusement of my family.

'Pass the... the the the... salt, please.'

Haha, I know that exact feeling.

As suggested, the context is that MC has just lost everything and is breaking down. This comes at the tail end of a list of misfortunes: "And my hamster is dead, and my phone doesn’t work, and . . . and . . . .”

 

[MichelleS]

Is it like Red in the movie Pearl Harbor where he literally can't speak in times of intense excitement?

I don't think so--I haven't seen that movie in such a long time though.

 

[Brigid Barry]

I don't think so--I haven't seen that movie in such a long time though.

I linked the video. It's subtitled (stammering) for whatever that's worth. It's the most extreme example in the movie but it's an ongoing issue for him.

 

[Buffysquirrel]

As someone currently grappling with an occasional verbal finding the right words issue, repeating the word that immediately proceeds the one I can't remember tends to happen, usually accompanied by me gesticulating madly trying to either point to it or conjure up the right word, much to the amusement of my family.

'Pass the... the the the... salt, please.'

This is me talking to the cats. "Get out of there ... Sa-- , McVe-- ... BILL!"