Splitting dialogue

[XerXesXu]

To be honest, you're not really communicating with anybody. You're just spewing bullshit like an asshole with diarrhea while several of us try to run damage control to protect the newbs who don't know better.

For the record, no, I'm not a sock puppet. This is my one and only account on Literotica. I'm sorry that you can't comprehend being right, and thus not needing to use a bunch of fake accounts to tell yourself that you're right…

Bears repeating... not even mastered the art of common and vulgar abuse.

Oracy is the necessary precursor to literacy. Concentrate on your oracy for 5 or 10 years. When you can hold, entertain and persuade the room by your speech, then start work on your literary skills, you'll find the've improved immensely. As for those who liked your post. Deep down they're ashamed of themselves for having done so.

 

[XerXesXu]

And after all, you can't PROVE it doesn't exist, right?

Bigfoot, when the moment of truth comes, like you, ghosts.

Don't choke on your mouse heads.

 

[SimonDoom]

 

[XerXesXu]

...to be fair, our two intrepid iconoclasts do claim there are style guides supporting this alternative of theirs. They also defer to the authority of a single colonial ex-soldier who happened to be a really, really good cricket batsman.

I suppose that's... something? Isn't it?

You are mis-informed, if I can put it charitably, like one or two others. There's no need to make things up. If you find yourself doing so, ask yourself 'Why?'. Do you have insight?

I've never claimed that there are style guides supporting my 'convention', 'non-rule', 'stylistic choice'. I don't read style guides, nor refer to them. I don't need to. Others feel that need. Why? Why indeed.

Someone, who I shan't name and shame (because I've forgotten his name - it's difficult to distinguish one from another in the herd), asked me where I was taught that rule.

I say I was taught English at school. Does that sound incredible to you? It would be silly to say 'Yes', so hold yourself in. As a deserved tease, I suggested that maybe he thought I hadn't been taught because he hadn't been taught English at school. (He has never disclosed where he was taught English). The herd member suggests that my teacher was an effete literary type who thought he knew it all. He was interested, so I told him who he was.

You, with your nose pressed against the asshole in front of you - yes, that's what herd members do - have trotted along behind him.

And why? Because you think, no, a better word is 'hold', that 'the absence of a quotation mark is an indication of continuity' and 'the presence of a quotation mark is an indication of continuity' are not incompatible. I do. Not only hold it, but think it, was taught it - I was also taught to think. My personal choice, as a stylist, is to omit the second limb, which is what creates the incompatibility. Keep it simple stupid - KISS XXX. Of course, I'm not calling you stupid, that's just a well-known phrase or saying, nonetheless an adage wise men adopt.

I hope you understand that referring to style guides, which are only of real interest to students of literary archeology, is not what I do. This is the 21st century, I won't be held back by the 20th century. I will do what I think is best. To anyone wishing to set their first toe into the 21st C I'd recommend Dreyer. He's half-way there. He seems perplexed that, as a person with no qualification, training or aptitude he's risen to the top as chief copyeditor for a leading publisher. Can't sentence diagram, doesn't know what a nominative absolute is. Asks who made up these absurd rules, or why? Postulates that, maybe 19th C 'Grammarians'. If an author wants 'he smiled,' well, the author knows best what he wants - and the reviewers didn't notice - shrug.

But, the most useful thing you'd learn, is that wit, humour, and self-doubt have a leavening effect. It will make your writing (and your posts) rise above the mundane, bureau-trash that turns people off.

 

[XerXesXu]

View attachment 2641330

'Ghosting' means disappearing, not appearing. I know you're writing your 'Great American Novel'. A little success leads to over-ambition. Hold tight to your style guide for reassurance.