I wondered what everyone thought of using, or not using, quotation marks. E.g. whether you prefer to use:

"Let's go swimming."

or

- Let's go swimming.



What other ways of notating speech are there? There must be more options, surely.

I just sketched down the bones of an adult short story which has quite a loose, slightly stream of consciousness style. There's some dialogue in there, and the usual quote marks look a bit, I don't know, prissily hyper-correct in the middle of it all. But I'm not sure if that's a good enough reason to ditch them.

I know, from past discussions on this subject, that you'll get almost as many opinions as contributors. For me, though, a lack of quotation marks makes for difficult reading. It's too useful a visual clue as to what's going on, and without it you end up having to read very, very carefully in order to separate out dialogue from internal thoughts. I think that would be especially true in a stream-of-consciousness narrative.

Alex

You could try italicising speech, maybe?

I agree with Alex. As a reader I like proper quotation marks.

I've read Julie Myerson's Something may happen and more than a few times I had to reread a passage to work out whether the line was thought or speech.

You could try italicising speech, maybe?

If there is a limited amount of speech, this may work, but I think chunks of italicised speech could become difficult to read or look really untidy.

I really dislike books which have no quotation marks, as the one thing an editor doesn't need to do when relaxing is work, and trying to fathom out speech from narrative is sometimes near impossible without the pesky things.

without it you end up having to read very, very carefully in order to separate out dialogue from internal thoughts

I think if there's a good reason for asking your reader to do this, you're all right in getting rid of them. I'm considering ditching them in a bit of my novel, and it's because for this little part of the book, I want my reader to work harder at figuring out the difference between the internal and the external worlds.

When an entire story is written without quotation marks, there is a danger that it makes the writer look illiterate. That was exactly my interpretation, partway through Something Might Happen, when I realised that the entire story lacked quotation marks.

The danger of dropping them partway through is a different one. The reader, having become used to seeing them, might completely misunderstand what is happening in the portion of the story where they are absent.

Ali Smith doesn't use quotation marks - I think this is true for all her work - it certainly is for The Whole Story and Other Stories, which I reread recently. I don't find it particularly confusing or difficult to follow, but I guess that depends entirely on how well it's been done. Maybe it makes readers work a bit harder - but that's not necessarily a bad thing so long as you can keep them engaged enough that they're willing to do that work. I do think it's important to know absolutely - for yourself - why you're doing it, that is, what you're trying to show or suggest by not using them.

Most modern French fiction uses the

- Let's go swimming

approach which is absolutely fine until you reach the follow-on sentence. So if you have,

- Let's go swimming. The water temperature...

until you get some way down the track (maybe with the need to backtrack) you don't know whether 'the water temperature' is something she's saying or something the author is now writing. It's a source of constant annoyance.

Unless you're prepared to start a new paragraph after each piece of speech, it's a pain. I would always favour the use of (single) quotes anyway.

Chris

Unless you're prepared to start a new paragraph after each piece of speech

Which is what I was always taught you should do.

I read the Julie Myersen and don't remember having any trouble. If a story takes you along then you don't really notice it.

I think if it's superbly well done then you don't even notice it (unless the author wants you to notice it, for a reason).

If it's poorly done then it's a pain in the arse and an added unnecessary complication.

I find speech marks easier on the eye and more "invisible" for want of a better word. If there are no speech marks I want it to be for a good reason - like the reasons ladyblackbird describes.