Young Writers Society

Not a question on how to punctuate dialogue itself, but on how you do it. I've been reviewing a bit this weekend and basically, a lot of writers seem to struggle to punctuate their dialogue properly. I know there are lots of resources available to show you how to, including a few articles on YWS, but I'm just wondering why people find it difficult.

I'm from England, and we get taught how to punctuate speech in primary school; I think most of my year at school can manage it by now. I've never had a problem with it personally, but I wonder if that's just me. I even had a moment where I thought I was correcting people wrong, since there were just so many stories where people had got it "wrong". *worries*

I'm a stickler for punctuation already. I loved Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves, if you know it, and I can't understand why people don't pick up on punctuation mistakes more often, both in their own work and in reviews. Do you think it's nitpicking, or what? I only review fiction, and I wonder if some people think it's less important in their own writing, when they aren't handing it in to a professor or teacher. I always point punctuation errors out, especially dialogue ones, but I see people skim over them all the time. Punctuation isn't one of those things you can take subjectively; there are rules.

Sorry, I asked quite a lot of questions, but this has been bugging me for a while. I'm not even sure if this is in the right forum, but hehe, we can go from here. Thanks for reading.

I think it's just such a little thing that people ignore it when they read, and once they start writing they just follow normal punctuation rules (which are: end a sentence with a period, capitalize the first letter, ect) and people don't realize that the "tag" is part of the sentence of dialogue.

The reason why people don't pick up on it is probably because so few people know. That, or they don't like reviewing grammar because it can take forever to point out everything. I point it out, and I link to articles, and explain a little how it's done. It's not considered nit-picky at all. It's just helping people improve.

~Rosey

Rosey is right. It's something people do not really pay attention too. I'm pretty sure they've learnt it, it's just not something that comes to mind when you are writing. It's something that people tend to ignore when reviewing too.
Maybe make a suggestion in the Comment/Suggestion thread to make the check spelling button remark the dialogue punctuation. *Just an idea*

And commenting on it is good! Definitely not nitpicky! It's a good thing, keep it up.

Kamas

Thanks for the responses. I've never found that I forget or ignore punctuation while writing, but I can see that that might explain why mistakes are made so often. Now that the Knowledge Base is back up properly, I guess I can start linking to articles again. ^_^

Have you ever thought, that the use of social networking sites, MSN, and texting, influences the younger generations, to stop caring about spelling, and punctuation?
It seems to me, that as the generations go down, people become lazy, not just in writing but generally. I do think that our society has a massive impact on this matter.

Poor dialogue punctuation makes me a grumpy Karsten. It hurts my eyes too much to overlook it.

I say that the best way to learn how to write is to read a lot, and that goes for grammar too. But, if I see errors in punctuation, I link them to an article and move on. It's not nitpicky-- sometimes, I don't think being nitpicky is a bad thing. People want their writing fixed, and that goes for the little stuff as well.