- Joined
- Nov 9, 2014
- Messages
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Forgive me authors, for I have sinned.
I have used dialogue tags other than "said" almost exclusively.
I began my novel from the POV of a secondary character.
I begin sentences with conjunctions. I think my high school English teacher said that was wrong. Instead the sentence should be joined to the previous one by a comma. But I think often a period reflects the significant pause I would make if it were speech.
I tend to run on sentences, in a completely grammatical way, mind you, by connecting various dependent clauses in a way that is entirely understandable to me, but can tend to confuse other people whose minds don't work as structurally as mine. In fact in most cases the sentence can be broken up. The parts can be presented independently. The reader can infer their logical connection.
I'm never quite sure when you should use a colon, semicolon, comma, or dash(es) to set off a related but independent clause without a conjunction: it seems to depend on the way the clauses are related - use a colon for example if the latter explains the former - but sometimes I think it's just a bad idea altogether; the right punctuation was a period.
I have used dialogue tags other than "said" almost exclusively.
I began my novel from the POV of a secondary character.
I begin sentences with conjunctions. I think my high school English teacher said that was wrong. Instead the sentence should be joined to the previous one by a comma. But I think often a period reflects the significant pause I would make if it were speech.
I tend to run on sentences, in a completely grammatical way, mind you, by connecting various dependent clauses in a way that is entirely understandable to me, but can tend to confuse other people whose minds don't work as structurally as mine. In fact in most cases the sentence can be broken up. The parts can be presented independently. The reader can infer their logical connection.
I'm never quite sure when you should use a colon, semicolon, comma, or dash(es) to set off a related but independent clause without a conjunction: it seems to depend on the way the clauses are related - use a colon for example if the latter explains the former - but sometimes I think it's just a bad idea altogether; the right punctuation was a period.