Lies our teachers told us

BaneStryfe said:

But apparently the above is not correct, despite that was what I remember being taught way back when in elementary school. The correct way, I guess, would be:

"Damn you Kyle," She whispered.

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Almost! Unless She is the character's name or title, it shouldn't be capitalised.

"Damn you, Kyle," she whispered.

Sometimes it can take a while to shake a bit of incorrect learning. I think we all have experience of that!

"I thought this was going to be about those "Synonyms for 'Said'" sheets of dialog tags that middle school teachers seem to love passing around," Kuwisdelu ejaculated.

"Damn you, Kyle," she whispered.

You need a comma before referring to a character directly in dialogue like this, and the pronoun in the dialogue tag is always lowercase, even if it follows a question mark or exclamation point.

"Damn you, Kyle!" she shouted.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Kyle?" she asked.

Helix said:

Almost! Unless She is the character's name or title, it shouldn't be capitalised.

"Damn you, Kyle," she whispered.

Sometimes it can take a while to shake a bit of incorrect learning. I think we all have experience of that!

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Yup. Think of it like a sentence without the quotes. You wouldn't capitalize after a comma unless it's a name or title.

BaneStryfe said:

oh trust me, I've got that. I swear I only say 'said' twice on a page. The rest is synonyms

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Uhm, I don't know how to break it to you, given your revelation-filled evening, but you should be using 'said,' probably 90+ percent of the time.

Readers gloss over 'said,' it doesn't distract from dialogue. When you have characters exclaiming, whispering, shouting, it's distracting.

Where I learned the correct formatting for dialogue was from reading novels. I mean, where else? It's all there on the page in consistent form. I don't recall being taught it in school.

BethS said:

Where I learned the correct formatting for dialogue was from reading novels. I mean, where else? It's all there on the page in consistent form. I don't recall being taught it in school.

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Bingo.

Kinda like all those 'school of life' lessons, most of which contradict formal schooling anyway

BaneStryfe said:

Is there anything you have learned that went against what you were taught as a kid?

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I don't remember being taught anything to do with novel-writing as a kid, or even a teenager.

I read a lot from the time I was five or six, though, so it wasn't too difficult to get the technical elements straight.

When I was eight I wrote a story in which one character's dialogue continued from one paragraph to another. As we know, that means there are no closed quotation marks in the first paragraph, but the second opens with them, eg:

'Really? You're so lucky,' said Tom. 'I wish they'd let us stay home from school tomorrow.
'So what'll you do on your day off?'

My teacher 'corrected' the piece - she added speech marks to the end of the first para, I think - and I was outraged. I may have been eight, but I was an avid reader and already an annoying perfectionist when it came to punctuation, grammar and formatting. I wasn't much into confrontation though, so I didn't say anything, but I wasn't impressed that I knew better than my teacher. (Aaaand I think I may have just pinpointed the seed of my general mistrust of authority figures...)

Paragraphs consist of five sentences, with the first one being the subject of the entire paragraph.

Sentence fragments are mistakes. Always.

Written works should be structured into the "inverse pyramid" / "pyramid" model.

Etc, etc, etc.

On the synonyms for said, I wonder if a lot of that occurs because of the books we're told are good. Many of the classics use all kinds of synonyms for said, and beginning writers don't realize that that has fallen out of style.

Cyia said:

Paragraphs consist of five sentences, with the first one being the subject of the entire paragraph.

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Ouch. This kind of rigid formality MIGHT have been appropriate if your class were candidates for the Chinese imperial examination circa the early Ming dynasty. But as general writing advice? I can't imagine the turgidity of what you must have all churned out. You should have all read your five-sentence paragraphs aloud, in unison, Midwich Cuckoo-style, whenever the teacher entered the room.

Written works should be structured into the "inverse pyramid" / "pyramid" model.

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I don't even know what that is. Looks like I've been doing writing wrong all these years!

HerNameIsLizzy said:

When I was eight I wrote a story in which one character's dialogue continued from one paragraph to another. As we know, that means there are no closed quotation marks in the first paragraph, but the second opens with them, eg:

'Really? You're so lucky,' said Tom. 'I wish they'd let us stay home from school tomorrow.
'So what'll you do on your day off?'

My teacher 'corrected' the piece - she added speech marks to the end of the first para, I think - and I was outraged. I may have been eight, but I was an avid reader and already an annoying perfectionist when it came to punctuation, grammar and formatting. I wasn't much into confrontation though, so I didn't say anything, but I wasn't impressed that I knew better than my teacher. (Aaaand I think I may have just pinpointed the seed of my general mistrust of authority figures...)

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You never know what you’re going to get. My English teacher in high school knew less about literature than I did as a freshman. A couple examples off the top of my head: she didn't know Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury, she had never heard of On the Road, and she told me she would rather I read a dime novel than another John Irving book.

OTOH, my 8th grade teacher was also a writer, and the best teacher I’ve ever had. He is one of the reasons I knew so much about literature going into high school. He was the one who not only taught me how to write a really good essay, but also taught me how to recognize the novice mistakes I made in my fiction writing. In a writing class I had with him and one other girl, he helped me submit a short story to a magazine and told me it was a compliment to have red ink all over the story when it was returned. I was twelve, so I assumed the critique meant the editor had hated it.

rwm4768 said:

"Damn you, Kyle," she whispered.

You need a comma before referring to a character directly in dialogue like this, and the pronoun in the dialogue tag is always lowercase, even if it follows a question mark or exclamation point.

"Damn you, Kyle!" she shouted.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Kyle?" she asked.

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Somewhere I got the idea that it would write "Damn you, Kyle," no matter what the tone of the voice. In other words the only time you don't use a comma at the end of the quote is if the quote ends the sentence. Then you would use the ! or ?. However I recently learned this is not correct. Thanks for the reminder. I was still struggling to understand which was right.

BaneStryfe said:

I quite literally discovered this very night that I have been committing heinous crimes when it comes to writing dialog. A thank you to Reziac for bringing it up, actually.

looking back through all of my work for the past 13 years I write my dialog like so:

“Damn you Kyle.” She whispered.

But apparently the above is not correct, despite that was what I remember being taught way back when in elementary school. The correct way, I guess, would be:

"Damn you Kyle," She whispered.

this makes me wonder what other things I may have learned in the past that isn't proper, or at least not proper anymore. Then again, maybe I learned it wrong back in school, who knows?

Is there anything you have learned that went against what you were taught as a kid?

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One of the worst experiences I had was when our high school English teacher had a final exam that was only on Scan-tron. The whole test was T/F and MC, no writing whatsoever. I didn't think about it at the time but looking back I find this unacceptable. An English final should require at least some writing.

Helix said:

Almost! Unless She is the character's name or title, it shouldn't be capitalised.

"Damn you, Kyle," she whispered.

Sometimes it can take a while to shake a bit of incorrect learning. I think we all have experience of that!

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Nice differentiation - because we can learn things incorrectly without it being the teacher's fault. And do we really need a whole new thread bagging teachers? I'm not even a teacher and I find it dispiriting...

mccardey said:

Nice differentiation - because we can learn things incorrectly without it being the teacher's fault. And do we really need a whole new thread bagging teachers? I'm not even a teacher and I find it dispiriting...

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Oh dear, I must have missed those threads. I would much rather celebrate the good teachers, than focus on the bad ones.

I had to shake this exact same thing, Bane. I think it was not so much incorrect learning as I just decided I knew all about writing because I can spell.
Considering I pride myself on my spelling and grammar, it's slightly embarrassing that I still get things wrong.

cornflake said:

....Readers gloss over 'said,' it doesn't distract from dialogue. When you have characters exclaiming, whispering, shouting, it's distracting.

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Hey, ejaculate for yourself, I personally don't get distracted by shouts, screams, commands, exclamations, rasps, groans, grunts, etc.

dondomat said:

Hey, ejaculate for yourself, I personally don't get distracted by shouts, screams, commands, exclamations, rasps, groans, grunts, etc.

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Ejaculations, on the other hand, are incredibly distracting. You really don't want to have on of those sneak up on you.