Comment by ofalkaed
3 years ago
Search engines seem to really fail here, they are just giving me more guides like the one here, I can not get them to give me anything about narrative voice beyond conflations of narrative voice and tone. You can see this use in a great deal of literature which uses the em-dash to introduce dialog in place of quotes, I believe Becket would apply but it has been years since I have read him so can not say for certain. Most of the authors known for their long complex sentences follow the conventions I outlined in my edit even if they do not use the em-dash for dialog.
>sounds rather restrictive and specific, to be honest.
Write a single sentence which clearly and concisely includes exposition, thought, aside, rhetorical question, self rebuttal and conclusion without following the "standard" I included in my edit. This is what allows writers like James, Joyce, Gass, Gaddis, Wallace, Pynchon, etc to write their wonderfully long and complex sentences and by complex I am referring too meaning as much as structure, we can have great meaning with simple structures but we have to accept a certain amount of ambiguity with that. Sure that challenge can be executed as a paragraph but then it ceases being a single thought, it is a collection of thoughts and that is a very different thing.
If you'll indulge me, I actually think your final paragraph could be copyedited to illustrate all of your suggested 'standard' rules — though in your own rendering you only used commas and periods.
> Write a single sentence, which clearly and concisely includes exposition, thought, aside, rhetorical question, self rebuttal and conclusion, without following the "standard" I included in my edit: This is what allows writers (like James, Joyce, Gass, Gaddis, Wallace, Pynchon, etc) to write their wonderfully long and complex sentences (and by complex I am referring to meaning as much as structure); we can have great meaning with simple structures, but we have to accept a certain amount of ambiguity with that—sure, that challenge can be executed as a paragraph, but then it ceases being a single thought; it is a collection of thoughts, and that is a very different thing.
I tried to stick to your 'standard', though you might disagree on some of my choices. I would say I found it a little constraining. Here's an alternative edit that doesn't follow your rules but – I find – creates a more fluid reading of your original words:
> Write a single sentence, which clearly and concisely includes: exposition; thought; aside; rhetorical question; self rebuttal; and conclusion – without following the "standard" I included in my edit. This is what allows writers like James, Joyce, Gass, Gaddis, Wallace, Pynchon, etc, to write their wonderfully long and complex sentences—and by complex I am referring to meaning, as much as structure. We can have great meaning with simple structures – but we have to accept a certain amount of ambiguity with that. Sure, that challenge can be executed as a paragraph; but then it ceases being a single thought—it is a collection of thoughts, and that is a very different thing.
All of which I hope goes to show that these choices are a matter of taste, not absolute rules
That paragraph of mine and most of my posts could stand some editing, I am terrible at editing on a screen and my casual use tends to be comma heavy. I think your edits wonderfully highlight an issue I believe I brought up in one of my posts in this thread, trying to "fix" things by changing the punctuation rarely works and restructuring the sentence(s) is almost always a better path.
>All of which I hope goes to show that these choices are a matter of taste, not absolute rules
Throughout this exchange I have avoided calling these rules and used convention instead, and that is what punctuation use is. Conventions are easy to break but you should have a good reason to do so if you want something to be readable and you must be consistent in your choices. I have tried to emphasize this throughout and I have repeated it many times, consistency of use is what really matters, punctuation marks are pretty much sign posts for the reader and as long as they remain consistent in their use and are well formed than most readers will have no issues figuring out any use.
Imagine if a town decided one day that they could save some money on removing a no longer needed stop sign by simply agreeing that it is not a stop sign, it is a small town and they can just pass the word that the stop sign on third is now a 30mph sign. This works quite well and save some money so now the town continues with this and starts changing the meaning of other signs. It is not difficult to see why this would be troublesome, eventually people will get confused and no one from out of town will have a clue. Thankfully our governments are consistent with their signs and a stop sign is a stop sign.