Who the hell approved this story?

[AwkwardMD]

Hey ya'll! I worked out every other day for the past two weeks and worked out ten times!

Hope that helps!

 

[Tzara]

One of the things that is interesting to me about this thread is that there seems to be something lacking from the statement "John said" when used in isolation, but that other, apparently similarly constructed sentences like "John sighed" or "John stood" seem complete in themselves, though they might be made more specific by contextualization.

For "John said" to make sense, one needs to know something about what he said--"John said he was tired," for example. This would also be true of a verb like announced; "John announced" as a sentence by itself doesn't really make sense, though "John announced his engagement to Karl" does.

I think, though, that "John spoke" is sufficiently clear by itself, telling the reader that John engaged in the act of speaking:

We sat around the conference table. John spoke. I looked out the window.​

whereas substituting "John said" doesn't convey the same sense of a complete thought:

We sat around the conference table. John said. I looked out the window.​

In the latter example, one would probably tend to attach "John said" to the preceding sentence as if it was a single sentence:

"We sat around the conference table," John said. I looked out the window.​

even though that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

As far as the argument about the standard formatting for dialogue tags, here is the comment on punctuating dialogue from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (emphasis mine):

Write each person's spoken words, however brief, as a separate paragraph. Use commas to set off dialogue tags such as "she said" or "he explained." If one person's speech goes on for more than one paragraph, use quotation marks to open the dialogue at the beginning of each paragraph. However, do not use closing quotation marks until the end of the final paragraph where that character is speaking.​

Though I suspect this still won't satisfy everyone.

 

[SubzeroGirl]

This thread had GOT to be a troll. Either that, or the sensitive soul is in agony from cognitive dissonance and should take a couple of paracetamol and lie down for a bit before posting again.

It’s so entertaining. I hope they keep going.

 

[KeithD]

One of the things that is interesting to me about this thread is that there seems to be something lacking from the statement "John said" when used in isolation, but that other, apparently similarly constructed sentences like "John sighed" or "John stood" seem complete in themselves, though they might be made more specific by contextualization.

For "John said" to make sense, one needs to know something about what he said--"John said he was tired," for example. This would also be true of a verb like announced; "John announced" as a sentence by itself doesn't really make sense, though "John announced his engagement to Karl" does.

"John said" is a dialogue tag needing to be attached to the same sentence(s) as the dialogue it's tagging. "John sighed" and "John stood" are declarative sentences, not dialogue tags. Different animals. It's as simple as that (and the one disagreeing with this is pretty simple too).

 

[Bramblethorn]

One of the things that is interesting to me about this thread is that there seems to be something lacking from the statement "John said" when used in isolation, but that other, apparently similarly constructed sentences like "John sighed" or "John stood" seem complete in themselves, though they might be made more specific by contextualization.

For "John said" to make sense, one needs to know something about what he said--"John said he was tired," for example. This would also be true of a verb like announced; "John announced" as a sentence by itself doesn't really make sense, though "John announced his engagement to Karl" does.

I think, though, that "John spoke" is sufficiently clear by itself, telling the reader that John engaged in the act of speaking:

​

We sat around the conference table. John spoke. I looked out the window.​

whereas substituting "John said" doesn't convey the same sense of a complete thought:

​

We sat around the conference table. John said. I looked out the window.​

In the latter example, one would probably tend to attach "John said" to the preceding sentence as if it was a single sentence:

​

"We sat around the conference table," John said. I looked out the window.​

even though that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Keith has already covered why these are different constructions, but I'd note that some confusion arises here because there are verbs which can go both ways. "John whispered" could be a dialogue tag, taking the comma, or it could be a complete declarative sentence without a quote attached. (Maybe we can't hear what John is whispering.) "Sighed" too.

I think this is our cue to segue into the perennial Literotica argument about which verbs are and aren't valid dialogue tags ;-)

 

[DanDraper]

Except it does matter. Grammar rules are there for the sake of the reader. Is it acceptable to not have spaces between the words? No.

Sorry, what I meant was, to the admins it doesn't matter how the dialogue is quoted as long as the story follow the websites guidelines.
You are right, proper grammar rules, especially quotation, is important for the readers. But that usually is reserved for books, news articles, basically anything professional you may read outside of this website.
On this website, it doesn't matter to the admins. They ignore a lot of improper forms of grammar; not just quotation, but pretty much everything.
We may not like it, but it's not like they're professional editors here. They're running a website which we pretty much use for free, so they're not going to sit around and editing the stories for us. They just read the stories to make sure it follows site guidelines and that is it.



....

 

[alohadave]

1. The only other way dialogue is separated from narration is with "character name:" not -.

French uses Guillemets (« »), instead of " ".

 

[burgwad]

I'll happily point out that somehow we are hung up on dialog tags and the use of nonstandard punctuation, when the story is written like this:

"The cloudy day was just a relief for Ken, that prefer this weather than a shining summer sun, but for Nancy, a gorgeous chubby girl that holds Ken's hand, it was much more than he could guess."

"Feeling some guilty about decept him, she tried to act normal."

"Nice D-Cup tits that despite sexy and graceful, could not get so attention as her advantaged butt."

"And suddenly, almost like magic... (Actually it was!) Well, suddenly, the mist became thin, and he could see clearly ahead."

"It was his first time on her original world, where laws of physics and specially of sexuality where different."

"And that was the last time is their lives that they had usual sex."

I am not cherry picking here. Rare is the sentence in Under Heavy Family Pussies that does not have grammatically baffling issues. Frankly, it's incredible. Idiolectal narration on this level is almost impossible to do on purpose and with such consistent inventiveness and seeming authenticity.

Is their story dumb as nails? Sure! Is their grasp of English tenuous bordering on taffy-like bordering on nightmarish? Yep! But, and I cannot believe how infrequently this title has been repeated in this thread, Under Heavy Family Pussies is an objectively amazing read regardless. Shut up about the hyphens and cool it with the dialog tag prescriptivism and let us please just simply celebrate the sheer whatever-this-is-ness of:

"And in a sudden chest twisting move she hit his face with a side breast punch. Then twist back and hit him with the other tit, with impressive strength! It like he was hit by a punch bag."

 

[Starscream_UK]

Nope. That particular rule hasn't changed. The forum is being finicky and not letting me post images just now, but I found examples of the same style in Ruthanna Emrys' "Deep Roots" (pub. 2018), Cat Valente's "Space Opera" (also 2018), and Tamsyn Muir's "Nona the Ninth", published just last month. (Edit: looks like the image from Nona did attach after all.)

Meanwhile, you still haven't provided so much as a single example of a professionally published book which punctuates dialogue tags the way you're claiming is correct.



Earlier you were making statements about what the convention in English grammar supposedly is. Now you're arguing about why it would be better if it followed your version. That's a different conversation. As it happens though, your version is bad for clarity too. Consider:



Under your version, it's ambiguous whether John is saying "I don't like fish" in a sighing kind of way, or whether he said "I don't like fish" and then sighed, or whether somebody else said "I don't like fish" and John is sighing in response.

But under the standard English punctuation this is completely unambiguous:



With the comma, "John sighed" can only be a dialogue tag: John is saying this in a sighing kind of way. If it doesn't have that comma then it's not being used as a dialogue tag.



Yes, you are supposed to assume that. A very successful author wrote it that way, and a very large publishing company published it that way, and a ton of people read it and understood it... and it looks like you did too, for all your complaints.

You're not required to like it. I'm not fond of that style either! But to claim that this doesn't happen in English, even after seeing examples of it happening in major English works, puts you at odds with reality.

Just a random aside, but "Space Opera" is fucking brilliant.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Just a random aside, but "Space Opera" is fucking brilliant.

It really is. "Life is beautiful and life is stupid."

 

[iloveskyrim1]

I'll happily point out that somehow we are hung up on dialog tags and the use of nonstandard punctuation, when the story is written like this:

"The cloudy day was just a relief for Ken, that prefer this weather than a shining summer sun, but for Nancy, a gorgeous chubby girl that holds Ken's hand, it was much more than he could guess."

"Feeling some guilty about decept him, she tried to act normal."

"Nice D-Cup tits that despite sexy and graceful, could not get so attention as her advantaged butt."

"And suddenly, almost like magic... (Actually it was!) Well, suddenly, the mist became thin, and he could see clearly ahead."

"It was his first time on her original world, where laws of physics and specially of sexuality where different."

"And that was the last time is their lives that they had usual sex."

I am not cherry picking here. Rare is the sentence in Under Heavy Family Pussies that does not have grammatically baffling issues. Frankly, it's incredible. Idiolectal narration on this level is almost impossible to do on purpose and with such consistent inventiveness and seeming authenticity.

Is their story dumb as nails? Sure! Is their grasp of English tenuous bordering on taffy-like bordering on nightmarish? Yep! But, and I cannot believe how infrequently this title has been repeated in this thread, Under Heavy Family Pussies is an objectively amazing read regardless. Shut up about the hyphens and cool it with the dialog tag prescriptivism and let us please just simply celebrate the sheer whatever-this-is-ness of:

"And in a sudden chest twisting move she hit his face with a side breast punch. Then twist back and hit him with the other tit, with impressive strength! It like he was hit by a punch bag."

SoIGuessIt'sOkayToNotHaveSpacesBewteenWordsThenBecauseHeyShutUpAboutSpaces.

 

[Smuts]

While I'm not a grammar nazi, and I'm all for stylizing stories, that one in particular is horrid. Just do the damned quotation marks correctly.

 

[djrip]

One of the things that is interesting to me about this thread is that there seems to be something lacking from the statement "John said" when used in isolation, but that other, apparently similarly constructed sentences like "John sighed" or "John stood" seem complete in themselves, though they might be made more specific by contextualization.

For "John said" to make sense, one needs to know something about what he said--"John said he was tired," for example. This would also be true of a verb like announced; "John announced" as a sentence by itself doesn't really make sense, though "John announced his engagement to Karl" does.

I think, though, that "John spoke" is sufficiently clear by itself, telling the reader that John engaged in the act of speaking:

​

We sat around the conference table. John spoke. I looked out the window.​

whereas substituting "John said" doesn't convey the same sense of a complete thought:

​

We sat around the conference table. John said. I looked out the window.​

I believe the issue there is said and announced are transitive verbs, requiring an object, like "He said we should go." Sighed and spoke and stood are intransitive verbs that do not require an object, so they can be the action part of a sentence all by themselves.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'll happily point out that somehow we are hung up on dialog tags and the use of nonstandard punctuation, when the story is written like this:

"The cloudy day was just a relief for Ken, that prefer this weather than a shining summer sun, but for Nancy, a gorgeous chubby girl that holds Ken's hand, it was much more than he could guess."

"Feeling some guilty about decept him, she tried to act normal."

I dunno, it just feels kinda mean-spirited to focus a thread on mocking a story by somebody who never asked us for a critique and who wasn't, AFAIK, trashing anybody else's work. I try to reserve that kind of thing for people who invite it.

From the passages you quoted and from some other clues in the work, the author of UHFP is either South African or a non-native English speaker, more likely the latter. That seems like another reason to be gentle on them; they're making the effort to communicate in a language I can understand, and even when that communication is imperfect, it's easier on me than trying to understand them in their own tongue.

I'm not the target audience, but I notice that "Under Heavy Family Pussy" is sitting at 4.17, suggesting that it managed to appeal to readers in that category.

 

[JadeMynx]

Wow! This thread taught me that I should have payed more attention in English...

Fuck science and math is all I am saying.

 

[burgwad]

I dunno, it just feels kinda mean-spirited to focus a thread on mocking a story by somebody who never asked us for a critique and who wasn't, AFAIK, trashing anybody else's work. I try to reserve that kind of thing for people who invite it.

From the passages you quoted and from some other clues in the work, the author of UHFP is either South African or a non-native English speaker, more likely the latter. That seems like another reason to be gentle on them; they're making the effort to communicate in a language I can understand, and even when that communication is imperfect, it's easier on me than trying to understand them in their own tongue.

I'm not the target audience, but I notice that "Under Heavy Family Pussy" is sitting at 4.17, suggesting that it managed to appeal to readers in that category.

You make a good and valid point. If I were writing erotica in Swahili as a native English speaker, I'm sure the result would be ... striking. And not just for linguistic reasons, but because culturally what I find "normal" from a storytelling perspective might not translate at all.

I'm curious, in this case, about what is and is not lost in translation with Under Heavy Family Pussies. To what extent is the effect the story has on us a result of the author's intent? Versus, to what extent is that same effect a result of passionate, unself-aware Tommy Wisseau-like conviction?

If I come off mean-spirited toward the author in my previous post, then I hate that. Like I said, I enjoy UHFP, maybe not as erotica, but as something dazzlingly new. I suppose I have to stand by the critiques I make regarding grammar and what let's maybe just call nuance, but I regret playing this for laughs. Ultimately, I want all new authors to feel welcome here and not to have to fret about bullying or ethnocentric behavior.

I maintain that UHFP is, in its current state, objectively hilarious. I hope the author is able to chuckle at themselves as readily as we are. But I want to redirect any previous mean-spiritedness I might have initially injected into this thread away from UHFP's author and instead toward all the self-knighted Grammar Nazis flexing on this thread. I was calling you guys out, not the author, for clearly not even looking at the story in question while pretending to give this enormous shit about how it was written.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If I come off mean-spirited toward the author in my previous post, then I hate that. Like I said, I enjoy UHFP, maybe not as erotica, but as something dazzlingly new. I suppose I have to stand by the critiques I make regarding grammar and what let's maybe just call nuance, but I regret playing this for laughs. Ultimately, I want all new authors to feel welcome here and not to have to fret about bullying or ethnocentric behavior.

I don't think your intentions were mean. I used to work with a lady from Russia who had a way of speaking delightfully "wrong" English: where a native speaker might say "let's just tweak that a bit", she'd say "let's just twinkle it a bit". I found it charming - in some ways it's a better word, it sounds like we're making the product sparkly! - and she's somebody that I'm very fond of.

UHFP is a little bit like that, it has a kind of charm and earnestness that shines through the unorthodox English. I think that's what you were appreciating.

But on a forum like this, with an author we don't know and who doesn't know us, it's very easy for that discussion to turn into mean-spirited mobbing. I've been involved in that kind of thing myself and looking back, I didn't intend to be mean but it would certainly have felt mean to the original authors if they'd heard those conversations. When I encourage people to be kind, it's a reminder to myself as much as anybody else.

I maintain that UHFP is, in its current state, objectively hilarious. I hope the author is able to chuckle at themselves as readily as we are. But I want to redirect any previous mean-spiritedness I might have initially injected into this thread away from UHFP's author and instead toward all the self-knighted Grammar Nazis flexing on this thread. I was calling you guys out, not the author, for clearly not even looking at the story in question while pretending to give this enormous shit about how it was written.

I don't think one has to read UHFP to know that some of what OP was asserting in this thread is just wrong, or to respond to that wrongness.