We are all familiar with the uses of quotation marks. Well, actually, that’s just wishful thinking on my part – plenty of people misuse them (see the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks).
Those of us who are familiar with them know that, at least in America, they are used mainly for two reasons: to indicate irony, which is what people are unwittingly doing in the aforementioned blog, and to frame a quote in nonfiction or dialogue in fiction.
I’ve discovered lately that in fiction, quotation marks are being abandoned. I’ve read plenty of novels in the last couple of years – nay, too many – in which the characters’ dialogue is indicated not by quotation marks, but by italics, long dashes or no special typography at all.
It has confused me. Did that character just say something? Did he only think it? Is there more than one person talking? Or was it just description? Sometimes there isn’t even so much as a “he said.”
Have you noticed this? Please tell me you have. I feel like I’ve awakened in one of those science fiction stories in which everything has subtly changed and everyone acts as if everything is normal but they’ve really all been replaced by lookalike alien invaders. Am I being too paranoid here?
Why, I ask you, are publishers flouting the conventions of quotation marks? I imagine some brash young editor playing Angry Birds with one hand and using the other to rebelliously slash at quotation marks with a virtual red pen. “That’s how my grandmother did it and I’m so over it!” he/she grouses. “Rules shmules! These stupid quotation marks are so old school.”
I dread the day when books are riddled with some weird wingdings in place of perfectly useful punctuation. Hello, he said.Why, hello there, she replied exuberantly..
I’m all for progress, but why fix it if it isn’t broken? Punctuation isn’t fashion – you don’t just change it up every season to get people to buy more of it. Some may call me a purist, maybe with a bit of a sneer. But I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Hello?
I haven't really noticed the quotation marks going away in books. I notice the overuse of them more, which drives me nuts (hence the blog addressing this annoyance).
ReplyDeleteI still see them being used, but often I find them incorrectly placed outside the end puntuation of the sentence, i.e. "I have finished my essay on quotation marks".
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